When tocloft and microtype are used together, there are rare circumstances in which the ToC dot leaders might show an extra dot. This can be exhibited in TeX Live 2026 — see small example in https://tex.stackexchange.com/a/761017/206306. This type of issue, known since 2007, was fixed in the LaTeX kernel in Dec 2018 by inserting a cancelling kern pair after the page number, but tocloft overwrites (or doesn't use) that portion of LaTeX. Please consider including the following in tocloft:
\newcommand\cftdefaultafterpnum{\kern-1sp\kern1sp} % or \kern-\p@\kern\p@ if @ can be used
\newcommand\cftpartafterpnum{\cftdefaultafterpnum}
\newcommand\cftchapafterpnum{\cftdefaultafterpnum}
\newcommand\cftsecafterpnum{\cftdefaultafterpnum}
\newcommand\cftsubsecafterpnum{\cftdefaultafterpnum}
\newcommand\cftsubsubsecafterpnum{\cftdefaultafterpnum}
\newcommand\cftparaafterpnum{\cftdefaultafterpnum}
\newcommand\cftsubparaafterpnum{\cftdefaultafterpnum}
\newcommand\cftfigafterpnum{\cftdefaultafterpnum}
\newcommand\cfttabafterpnum{\cftdefaultafterpnum}
This handles the default usage of tocloft where there will be dot leaders and right-aligned page numbers. The tocloft documentation mentions ways to modify such behaviors. In those cases the cancelling kern pair is no longer appropriate, in other words the documentation should also advise: if one eliminates the dot leaders and/or no longer right-aligns the page numbers then one should also eliminate the cancelling kern pair with
\renewcommand\cftdefaultafterpnum{}
When
tocloftandmicrotypeare used together, there are rare circumstances in which the ToC dot leaders might show an extra dot. This can be exhibited in TeX Live 2026 — see small example in https://tex.stackexchange.com/a/761017/206306. This type of issue, known since 2007, was fixed in the LaTeX kernel in Dec 2018 by inserting a cancelling kern pair after the page number, but tocloft overwrites (or doesn't use) that portion of LaTeX. Please consider including the following intocloft:This handles the default usage of
tocloftwhere there will be dot leaders and right-aligned page numbers. Thetocloftdocumentation mentions ways to modify such behaviors. In those cases the cancelling kern pair is no longer appropriate, in other words the documentation should also advise: if one eliminates the dot leaders and/or no longer right-aligns the page numbers then one should also eliminate the cancelling kern pair with