troff tips

2022-06-09. "Inline" requests

Normally, troff inserts whitespace whenever it encounters a newline. This is sometimes undesirable, especially when working with inline formatting such as italics.

To avoid a word break before a request, put a \c at the end of the previous line. For example,

.ft I
un\c
.ft R
initialized

renders as:

uninitialized

Without the \c, it would render as:

un initialized