[PLUG] Emacs Text Editing Question

[Rich Shepard]

   While I regularly use emacs I'm not as expert with it as are many of you.
Perhaps your expertise can explain an emacs paragraph formatting behavior
that seems anomalous to me.

   Line length is set to 78 characters, and I use M-q to reformat a paragraph
when I've made changes. Most lines are filled to column 78, or less, but now
and then a word that could fit on a line without exceeding column 78 is
placed on the following line. I'd like to understand why.

   Here are two such lines as an example:

measures are difficult to interpret as suitable for fish and
wildlife. Biological-based standards of water quality are more useful

The 'd' in "and" is on column 59; when I place "wildlife" on that line the
space after the '.' is in column 70. So, why is the \n placed between "and"
and "wildlife." when I reformat using M-q?

A curious mind wants to know,

Rich