From e18cf594d388aaa014acea33b0f06178165e2f8a Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: Michael Meyer <me@entrez.cc>
Date: Thu, 8 Jan 2026 11:18:23 -0500
Subject: [PATCH] Avoid redundant punctuation in engraving message

Change the formatting of reading an engraving to include a terminal
period only if the engraving does not already include punctuation, to
avoid messages like:

| You feel the words: "Please don't feed the animals.".

This brings the formatting of the read_engr_at() message in line with
doread().

One minor concern with this is that degraded engravings can use
punctuation to represent "chicken scratch" degraded text rather than as
actual punctuation, and ideally it might be better to include the final
period if you're reading an engraving like "Hc| ?  |?".

This is true of burnt T-shirts already, but it's much more common with
engravings.  It should be possible to identify "real punctuation" by
checking whether (ep->engr_txt[pristine_text] == et[elen - 1]) -- but
this doesn't actually work without more tinkering, since trimming
initial whitespace in u_wipe_engr() updates the actual_text pointer so
the indices stop matching.
---
 src/engrave.c | 14 +++++++++++---
 1 file changed, 11 insertions(+), 3 deletions(-)

diff --git a/src/engrave.c b/src/engrave.c
index e029e87dc..40c3f95b1 100644
--- a/src/engrave.c
+++ b/src/engrave.c
@@ -370,18 +370,26 @@ read_engr_at(coordxy x, coordxy y)
 
         if (sensed) {
             char *et, buf[BUFSZ];
+            const char *endpunct;
             int maxelen = (int) (sizeof buf
                                  /* sizeof "literal" counts terminating \0 */
-                                 - sizeof "You feel the words: \"\".");
+                                 - sizeof "You feel the words: \"\"."),
+                elen = (int) strlen(ep->engr_txt[actual_text]);
 
-            if ((int) strlen(ep->engr_txt[actual_text]) > maxelen) {
+            if (elen > maxelen) {
                 (void) strncpy(buf, ep->engr_txt[actual_text], maxelen);
                 buf[maxelen] = '\0';
                 et = buf;
+                elen = maxelen;
             } else {
                 et = ep->engr_txt[actual_text];
             }
-            You("%s: \"%s\".", (Blind) ? "feel the words" : "read", et);
+            endpunct = "";
+            if (elen > 0 && !strchr(".!?", et[elen - 1])) {
+                endpunct = ".";
+            }
+            You("%s: \"%s\"%s", (Blind) ? "feel the words" : "read", et,
+                endpunct);
             Strcpy(ep->engr_txt[remembered_text], ep->engr_txt[actual_text]);
             ep->eread = 1;
             ep->erevealed = 1;