This is a follow up on an earlier post regarding where to put a space following a conditional variable in a sentence (John's reply appears below). Anyway, I found another case where the space is being omitted. The TMG sentence: [:CR:][:TAB:][P1F] <and [P2F] >appeared on the [Y]< [L5]> census <at [L]>< [M]> TMG report output: John appeared on the 1706 NY census at Staten Island giving his age as 48. 2nd Site output: Johnappeared on the 1706 NY census at Staten Island giving his age as 48. Maybe it happens because there was no P2 in the tag. Not a big deal, but I need to know how to make sure spaces are all where I want them. Thanks, Kay Schmidt ============ Subject: Re: [TMG] Where to put space in conditional references Date: Thu, 11 Jun 2015 16:39:57 -0400 I am not sure which sentence you mean when you say "recommended example in the original message". I just tested the output of this sentence: [:CR:][:CR:][:TAB:]<She was [RA:Child] when >her parents divorced<[D]>. In SS, the result was: She was 28 when her parents divorced in January 1850. I also tested this sentence: [:CR:][:CR:][:TAB:]<She was [RA:Child] when> her parents divorced<[D]>. That produced the same output in SS: She was 28 when her parents divorced in January 1850.

Kay, You have this: [:CR:][:TAB:][P1F] <and [P2F] >appeared on the [Y]< [L5]> census <at [L]>< [M]> While that works in TMG, TMG's sentences are typically arranged like this: [P] was born <[D]> <[L]> Note that there are spaces on either side of the <[D]> conditional reference. Even though the spaces are not inside the conditional expression, TMG will only output one of the spaces, not both. (Which one? Hard to tell!) To make your sentence work in TMG and SS, change it as follows: [:CR:][:TAB:][P1F] <and [P2F]> appeared on the [Y] <[L5]> census <at [L]> <[M]> Follow the model above and you'll get good results most of the time. Typically, issues only arise when you do not want a space to precede a punctuation mark but the punctuation mark is the first character inside a conditional reference. For that, and some other cases, you may try to control spaces by including them inside conditional references. When you do include spaces in conditional references, it will probably work better if you put them in the prefixes (before the variable) rather than the suffixes (after the variable). So: [:CR:][:TAB:][P1F]< and [P2F]> appeared on the [Y]< [L5]> census< at [L]>< [M]> As I mentioned earlier, I am unaware of any explicit rules that describe how TMG treats spaces in sentence structures. After observing how TMG works, and making adjustments so that SS could handle some cases that TMG has trouble with, I programmed SS to ignores spaces that occur before conditional references. John

I wrote: > While that works in TMG, TMG's sentences are typically > arranged like this: > > [P] was born <[D]> <[L]> > > Note that there are spaces on either side of the <[D]> > conditional reference. Even though the spaces are not > inside the conditional expression, TMG will only output > one of the spaces, not both. (Which one? Hard to tell!) I left out a key clause: Even though the spaces are not inside the conditional expression, _if the date is empty_, TMG will only output one of the spaces, not both.