How to break a paragraph of running text with a example block or figure?

Question

This may have been asked before, but I couldn't find it with my limited vocabulary of linguistic terms.

When writing a paragraph of running text that's broken up by a (code) example block or figure, how do I end the previous incomplete sentence and how do I continue the sentence?

I used to do it like this, with a colon and ellipsis:

For instance, the rewrite rule:

 |[ i + j ]| -> |[ k ]| where <add>(i, j) => k 

...expresses constant folding for addition.

Here's how the Rust programming language book does it, capitalizing the continued sentence:

You can also set another attribute based on a cfg variable with cfg_attr:

#[cfg_attr(a, b)]

Will be the same as #[b] if a is set by cfg attribute, and nothing otherwise.

Here's how the Stratego language manual does it:

For instance, the rewrite rule

 |[ i + j ]| -> |[ k ]| where <add>(i, j) => k 

expresses constant folding for addition.

What is the correct way to do this?

Answer 1

Mermin's guide on equations has a lot to say about this in the math domain. See: http://www.pamitc.org/documents/mermin.pdf

The suggested practice is to include equations or snippets as if they were words in the sentence that flow inline in the text, obeying standard English rules for punctuation. For example, one might speak about the Pythagorean identity,

a^2 + b^2 = c^2 ,

where a, b, and c are the sides of the triangle. This doesn't work as well for code snippets where the comma may be lexically significant.