et al., i.e., e.g., etc.

Only time for a short post. Foreign words are italicized frequently in English; however, et al., i.e., e.g., and etc. probably should not be. It draws unnecessary attention to the words and modern style manuals will tell you not to italicize them.

Of more relevance to the TeX world: make sure the space after the period is an interword space unless the abbreviation is actually ending the sentence. The length of the space is control by a variety of factors in TeX, the most important of which is the \spacefactor. LaTeX provides \@ to reset the space factor and a control space \ can be used to produce a normal space. Examine TeX by Topic for details.