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Name | Synopsis | Description | Options | Files | Notes | Authors | See Also | COLOPHON |
groff_man_style(7) Miscellaneous Information Manual groff_man_style(7)
groff_man_style - GNU roff man page tutorial and style guide
groff -man [option ...] [input-file ...]
groff -m man [option ...] [input-file ...]
The man macro package for groff is used to produce manual pages
(“man pages”) like the one you are reading.
This document presents the macros thematically; for those needing
only a quick reference, the following table lists them
alphabetically, with cross-references to appropriate subsections
below.
Macro Meaning Subsection
────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
.B Bold Font style macros
.BI Bold, italic alternating Font style macros
.BR Bold, roman alternating Font style macros
.EE Example end Document structure macros
.EX Example begin Document structure macros
.I Italic Font style macros
.IB Italic, bold alternating Font style macros
.IP Indented paragraph Paragraph macros
.IR Italic, roman alternating Font style macros
.LP (Left) paragraph Paragraph macros
.ME Mail-to end Hyperlink and email macros
.MT Mail-to start Hyperlink and email macros
.OP (Command-line) option Command synopsis macros
.P Paragraph Paragraph macros
.PP Paragraph Paragraph macros
.RB Roman, bold alternating Font style macros
.RE Relative inset end Document structure macros
.RI Roman, italic alternating Font style macros
.RS Relative inset start Document structure macros
.SB Small bold Font style macros
.SH Section heading Document structure macros
.SM Small Font style macros
.SS Subsection heading Document structure macros
.SY Synopsis start Command synopsis macros
.TH Title heading Document structure macros
.TP Tagged paragraph Paragraph macros
.TQ Supplemental paragraph tag Paragraph macros
.UE URL end Hyperlink and email macros
.UR URL start Hyperlink and email macros
.YS Synopsis end Command synopsis macros
Macros whose use we discourage (.AT, .DT, .HP, .PD, and .UC) are
described in subsection “Deprecated features” below.
Man pages should be encoded using Unicode basic Latin code points
exclusively, and employ the Unix line-ending convention (U+000A
only).
Macro reference preliminaries
Each macro is described in a tagged paragraph. Closely related
macros, such as .EX and .EE, are grouped together.
A macro call appears on a line starting with a dot (“.”), followed by
zero or more spaces and then the macro name. Some macros accept
arguments; each such argument is separated from the macro name and
any subsequent arguments by one or more spaces. A newline, unless
escaped (see subsection “Portability” below), terminates the macro
call.
Optional macro arguments are indicated by surrounding them with
square brackets. If a macro accepts multiple arguments, those
containing space characters must be double-quoted to be interpreted
correctly. An empty macro argument can be specified with a pair of
double-quotes (“""”), but the man package is designed such that this
should seldom be necessary. Unused macro arguments are more often
simply omitted, or good style suggests that a more appropriate macro
be chosen, that earlier arguments are more important than later ones,
or that arguments have identical significance such that skipping any
is superfluous. Most macro arguments are strings that will be output
as text; exceptions are noted.
Bear in mind that groff is fundamentally a programming system for
typesetting. Consequently, the verb “to set” is frequently used
below in the sense “to typeset”.
Document structure macros
The highest level of organization of a man page is determined by this
group of macros. .TH (title heading) identifies the document as a
man page and defines information enabling its indexing by mandb(8) or
a similar tool. Section headings (.SH), one of which is mandatory
and many of which are standardized, facilitate quick location of
relevant material by the reader and aid the man page writer to
discuss all essential aspects of the topic. Subsection headings
(.SS) are optional and permit sections that grow long to develop in a
controlled way. Many technical discussions benefit from examples;
lengthy ones, especially those reflecting multiple lines of input to
or output from the system, are usefully bracketed by .EX and .EE.
When none of the foregoing meets a structural demand, a region within
a (sub)section can be manually inset within .RS and .RE macros.
.TH title section
[footer-middle] [footer-inside] [header-middle] Define the
title of the man page as title and the section of the manual
volume as section. This use of “section” has nothing to do
with the section headings otherwise discussed in this page; it
arises from the organizational scheme of printed and bound
Unix manuals. See man(1) for details on the section numbers
and suffixes applicable to your system. title and section are
positioned together at the left and right in the header line
(with section in parentheses immediately appended to title).
footer-middle is centered in the footer line. The arrangement
of the rest of the footer depends on whether double-sided
layout is enabled with the option -rD1. When disabled (the
default), footer-inside is positioned at the bottom left.
Otherwise, footer-inside appears at the bottom left on odd-
numbered (recto) pages, and at the bottom right on even-
numbered (verso) pages. The outside footer is the page
number, except in the continuous-rendering mode enabled by the
option -rcR=1, in which case it is the title and section, as
in the header. header-middle is centered in the header line.
If section is a simple integer between 1 and 9 (inclusive), or
is exactly “3p”, there is no need to specify header-middle;
the macro package will supply text for it. For HTML output,
headers and footers are completely suppressed.
Additionally, this macro starts a new page; the page number is
reset to 1 (unless the -rC1 option is given on the command
line). This feature is intended only for formatting multiple
man pages.
A man page should contain exactly one .TH call at or near the
beginning of the file, prior to any other macro calls.
By convention, footer-middle is the most recent modification
date of the man page source document, and footer-inside is the
name and version or release of the project providing it.
.SH [ heading-text] Set heading-text as a section heading flush
left. The text following .SH up to the end of the line, or
the text on the next input line if .SH is given no arguments,
is set in bold (or the font specified by the string HF) and,
on typesetter devices, slightly larger than the base point
size. Additionally, the left margin and indentation affecting
subsequent text are reset to their default values. Text on
input lines after heading-text is set as an ordinary paragraph
(.PP).
The content of heading-text and ordering of sections has been
standardized by common practice, as has much of the layout of
material within sections. For example, a section called
“Name” or “NAME” must exist, must be the first section after
the .TH call, and must contain only a line of the form
topic[, another-topic]... \- summary-description
for a man page to be properly indexed. See man(7) for the
conventions prevailing on your system.
.SS [ subheading-text] Set subheading-text as a subsection heading
indented between a section heading and an ordinary paragraph
(.PP). See subsection “Horizontal and vertical spacing” below
for the indentation amount. The text following .SS up to the
end of the line, or the text on the next input line if .SS is
given no arguments, is set in bold (or the font specified by
the string HF). Additionally, the left margin and indentation
affecting subsequent text are reset to their default values.
Text on input lines after subheading-text is set as an
ordinary paragraph (.PP).
.EX
.EE Begin and end example. After .EX, filling and hyphenation are
disabled and a constant-width (monospaced) font is selected.
Calling .EE enables filling and restores the previous font and
initial hyphenation mode.
Example regions are useful for formatting code, shell
sessions, and text file contents.
These macros are extensions, introduced in Version 9 Unix, to
the original man package. Many systems running AT&T, Heirloom
Doctools, or Plan 9 troff support them. To be certain your
page will be portable to systems that do not, copy their
definitions from the an-ext.tmac file of a groff installation.
.RS [ indent] Start a new relative inset level, moving the left
margin right by indent, if specified, and by a default amount
otherwise; see subsection “Horizontal and vertical spacing”
below. Calls to .RS can be nested; each call increments by 1
the inset level used by .RE. The inset level prior to any .RS
calls is 1.
.RE [ level] End a relative inset; move the left margin back to that
corresponding to inset level level. If no argument is given,
move the left margin one level back.
Paragraph macros
An ordinary paragraph (.PP) like this one is set without a first-line
indentation at the current left margin, which by default is indented
from the leftmost position of the output device. In man pages and
other technical literature, definition lists are frequently
encountered; these can be set as “tagged paragraphs” (.TP and .TQ),
which have one or more leading tags followed by a paragraph that has
an additional left indentation. The indented paragraph (.IP) macro
is useful to continue the indented content of a narrative started
with .TP, or to present an itemized or ordered list. All paragraph
macros break the output line at the current position. If another
paragraph macro has occurred since the previous .SH or .SS, they
(except for .TQ) follow the break with a default amount of vertical
space, which can be changed by the deprecated .PD macro; see
subsection “Horizontal and vertical spacing” below. They also reset
the point size and font style to defaults (.TQ again excepted); see
subsection “Font style macros” below.
.LP
.PP
.P Begin a new paragraph; these macros are synonymous. The
indentation is reset to the default value; the left margin, as
affected by .RS and .RE, is not.
.TP [ indent] Set a paragraph with a leading tag, and the remainder
of the paragraph indented. The input line following this
macro, known as the tag, is printed at the current left
margin. Subsequent text is indented by indent, if specified,
and by a default amount otherwise; see subsection “Horizontal
and vertical spacing” below.
If the tag is not as wide as the indentation, the paragraph
starts on the same line as the tag, at the applicable
indentation, and continues on the following lines. Otherwise,
the descriptive part of the paragraph begins on the line
following the tag.
The line containing the tag can include a macro call, for
instance to set the tag in bold with .B. .TP was used to
write the first paragraph of this description of .TP, and .IP
the subsequent ones.
.TQ Set an additional tag for a paragraph tagged with .TP. The
pending output line is broken. The tag on the input line
following this macro and subsequent lines are handled as with
.TP.
This macro is not defined on systems running AT&T, Plan 9, or
Solaris 10 troff. To be certain your page will be portable to
those systems, copy its definition from the an-ext.tmac file
of a groff installation.
The descriptions of .LP, .PP, and .P above were written using
.TP and .TQ.
.IP [ tag] [indent] Set an indented paragraph with an optional tag.
The tag and indent arguments, if present, are handled as with
.TP, with the exception that the tag argument to .IP cannot
include a macro call.
Two convenient uses for .IP are
(1) to start a new paragraph with the same indentation
as an immediately preceding .IP or .TP paragraph,
if no indent argument is given; and
(2) to set a paragraph with a short tag that is not
semantically important, such as a bullet
(·)—obtained with the \(bu special character
escape—or list enumerator, as seen in this very
paragraph.
Command synopsis macros
Command synopses are a staple of section 1 and 8 man pages. These
macros aid you to construct one that has the classical Unix
appearance. A command synopsis is wrapped in .SY/.YS calls, with
command-line options of some formats indicated by .OP.
These macros are not defined on systems running AT&T, Plan 9, or
Solaris 10 troff. To be certain your page will be portable to those
systems, copy their definitions from the an-ext.tmac file of a groff
installation.
.SY command
Begin synopsis. A new paragraph is begun at the left margin
(like .PP and its aliases) unless .SY has already been called
without a corresponding .YS, in which case only a break is
performed. Hyphenation is turned off. The command argument
is set in bold. The output line is filled as normal, but if a
break is required, subsequent output lines are indented by the
width of command plus a space.
.OP option-name
[option-argument] Indicate an optional command parameter
called option-name, which is set in bold. If the option takes
an argument, specify option-argument using a noun,
abbreviation, or hyphenated noun phrase. If present, option-
argument is preceded by a space and set in italics. Square
brackets in roman surround both arguments.
.YS End synopsis. Restore previous indentation and initial
hyphenation mode.
Multiple .SY/.YS blocks can be specified, for instance to distinguish
differing modes of operation of a complex command like tar(1); each
will be vertically separated as paragraphs are.
.SY can also be repeated multiple times before a closing .YS, which
is useful to indicate synonymous ways of invoking a particular mode
of operation.
For example,
.SY groff
.OP \-abcegiklpstzCEGNRSUVXZ
.OP \-d cs
.OP \-f fam
.OP \-F dir
.OP \-I dir
.OP \-K arg
.OP \-L arg
.OP \-m name
.OP \-M dir
.OP \-n num
.OP \-o list
.OP \-P arg
.OP \-r cn
.OP \-T dev
.OP \-w name
.OP \-W name
.RI [ file
\&.\|.\|.\&]
.YS
.
.SY groff
.B \-h
.SY groff
.B \-\-help
.YS
produces the following output.
groff [-abcegiklpstzCEGNRSUVXZ] [-d cs] [-f fam] [-F dir]
[-I dir] [-K arg] [-L arg] [-m name] [-M dir] [-n num]
[-o list] [-P arg] [-r cn] [-T dev] [-w name] [-W name]
[file ...]
groff -h
groff --help
Several features of the above example are of note.
· The empty request (.), which does nothing, is used for verti‐
cal spacing in the input file for readability by the document
maintainer. Do not put blank (empty) lines in a man page
source document.
· The command and option names are presented in bold to cue the
user that they should be input literally.
· Option dashes are specified with the \- escape sequence; this
is an important practice to make them clearly visible and to
facilitate cut-and-paste from the rendered man page to a shell
prompt or text file.
· Option arguments and command operands are presented in italics
(but see subsection “Font style macros” below regarding termi‐
nals) to cue the user that they must be replaced with appro‐
priate text.
· Symbols that are neither to be typed literally nor simply
replaced appear in the roman style; brackets surround optional
arguments, and an ellipsis indicates that the previous syntac‐
tical element may be repeated arbitrarily.
Authors of man pages should note the use of the zero-width
space escape sequence \& preceding the ellipsis, which pre‐
vents it from being misinterpreted as an invalid control line,
and after it, which prevents it from being misinterpreted as
the end of a sentence. See subsection “Portability” below.
Hyperlink and email macros
Email addresses are bracketed with .MT/.ME and URL hyperlinks with
.UR/.UE.
These macros are not defined on systems running AT&T, Plan 9, or
Solaris 10 troff. To be certain your page will be portable to those
systems, copy their definitions from the an-ext.tmac file of a groff
installation.
.MT address
.ME [ punctuation] Identify address as an RFC 6068 addr-spec for a
“mailto:” URI with the text between the two macro calls as the
link text. A punctuation argument to .ME is placed at the end
of the link text without intervening space. Note that address
may not be visible in the output text, particularly if the man
page is being viewed as HTML. On a device that is not a
browser, address is set in angle brackets after the link text
and before punctuation.
When rendered by groff to a terminal or PostScript device,
Contact
.MT fred.foonly@\:fubar.net
Fred Foonly
.ME
for more information.
displays as “Contact Fred Foonly ⟨fred.foonly@fubar.net⟩ for
more information.”.
The use of \: to insert hyphenless discretionary breaks is a
GNU extension and can be omitted.
.UR URL
.UE [ punctuation] Identify URL as an RFC 3986 URI hyperlink with
the text between the two macro calls as the link text. A
punctuation argument to .UE is placed at the end of the link
text without intervening space. Note that URL may not be vis‐
ible in the output text, particularly if the man page is being
viewed as HTML. On a device that is not a browser, URL is set
in angle brackets after the link text and before punctuation.
When rendered by groff to a terminal or PostScript device,
The GNU Project of the Free Software Foundation
hosts the
.UR https://\:www.gnu.org/\:software/\:groff/
groff home page
.UE .
displays as “The GNU Project of the Free Software Foundation
hosts the groff home page ⟨https://www.gnu.org/soft‐
ware/groff/⟩.”.
The use of \: to insert hyphenless discretionary breaks is a
GNU extension and can be omitted.
Font style macros
The man macro package is limited in its font styling options, offer‐
ing only bold (.B), italic (.I), and roman. Italic text is usually
set underscored instead on terminal devices. The .SM and .SB macros
set text in roman or bold, respectively, at a smaller point size;
these differ visually from regular-sized roman or bold text only on
typesetter devices. It is often necessary to set text in different
styles without intervening space. The macros .BI, .BR, .IB, .IR,
.RB, and .RI, where “B”, “I”, and “R” indicate bold, italic, and
roman, respectively, set their odd- and even-numbered arguments in
alternating styles, with no space separating them.
Because font styles are presentational rather than semantic, con‐
flicting traditions have arisen regarding which font styles should be
used to mark file or path names, environment variables, in-line lit‐
erals, and man page cross-references.
The default point size and family for typesetter devices is 10-point
Times. The default style is roman.
.B [ text] Set text in bold. If the macro is given no arguments,
the text of the next input line is set in bold.
Use bold for literal portions of syntax synopses, for command-
line options in running text, and for literals that are major
topics of the subject under discussion; for example, this page
uses bold for macro, string, and register names. In an
.EX/.EE example of interactive I/O (such as a shell session),
set only user input in bold.
.I [ text] Set text in italics. If the macro is given no argu‐
ments, the text of the next input line is set in italics.
Use italics for file and path names, for environment vari‐
ables, for enumeration or preprocessor constants in C, for
variable (user-determined) portions of syntax synopses, for
the first occurrence (only) of a technical concept being
introduced, for names of works of software (including commands
and functions, but excluding names of operating systems or
their kernels), and anywhere a parameter requiring replacement
by the user is encountered. An exception involves variable
text in a context that is already marked up in italics, such
as file or path names with variable components; in such cases,
follow the convention of mathematical typography: set the file
or path name in italics as usual but use roman for the vari‐
able part (see .IR and .RI below), and italics again in run‐
ning roman text when referring to the variable material.
.SM [ text] Set text one point smaller than the default point size
on typesetter devices. If the macro is given no arguments,
the text of the next input line is set smaller.
Note: terminals will render text at normal size instead. Do
not rely upon .SM to communicate semantic information distinct
from using roman style at normal size; it will be hidden from
readers using such devices.
.SB [ text] Set text in bold and (on typesetter devices) one point
smaller than the default point size. If the macro is given no
arguments, the text of the next input line is set smaller and
in bold.
Note: terminals will render text in bold at the normal size
instead. Do not rely upon .SB to communicate semantic infor‐
mation distinct from using bold style at normal size; it will
be hidden from readers using such devices.
Note what is not prescribed for setting in bold or italics above:
elements of “synopsis language” such as ellipses and brackets around
options; proper names and adjectives; titles of anything other than
works of literature or software; identifiers for standards documents
or technical reports such as CSTR #54, RFC 1918, Unicode 13.0, or
POSIX.1-2017; acronyms; and occurrences after the first of a techni‐
cal term or piece of jargon. Again, the names of operating systems
and their kernels are, by practically universal convention, set in
roman.
Be frugal with the use of italics for emphasis, and particularly with
the use of bold. Brief runs of literal text, such as references to
individual characters or short strings, including section and subsec‐
tion headings of man pages, are suitable objects for quotation; see
the \(lq, \(rq, \(oq, and \(cq escapes in subsection “Portability”
below.
Unlike the above font style macros, the font style alternation macros
below accept only arguments on the same line as the macro call. If
space is required within one of the arguments, first consider whether
the same result could be achieved with as much clarity by using the
single-style macros on separate input lines. When it cannot, double-
quote an argument containing embedded space characters. Setting all
three different styles within a word presents challenges; it is pos‐
sible with the \c and/or \f escapes, but see subsection “Portability”
below for caveats.
.BI bold-text italic-text
... Set each argument in bold and italics, alternately.
.BI \-r name = n
.BR bold-text roman-text
... Set each argument in bold and roman, alternately.
Any such change becomes effective with the first
use of
.BR .NH ,
.I after
the new alias is defined.
.IB italic-text bold-text
... Set each argument in italics and bold, alternately.
All macro package files must be named
.IB name .tmac
to fully use the
.I tmac
mechanism.
.IR italic-text roman-text
... Set each argument in italics and roman, alternately.
This is the first command of the
.IR prologue .
.RB roman-text bold-text
... Set each argument in roman and bold, alternately.
Also,
the statement
.RB \(oq "delim on" \(cq
is not handled specially.
.RI roman-text italic-text
... Set each argument in roman and italics, alternately.
.RI [ file
\&.\|.\|.\&]
Horizontal and vertical spacing
The indent argument accepted by .RS, .IP, .TP, and the deprecated .HP
is a number plus an optional scale indicator. If no scale indicator
is given, the man package assumes “n”; that is, the width of a letter
“n” in the font current when the macro is called (see section “Numer‐
ical Expressions” in groff(7)). An indentation specified in a call
to .IP, .TP, or the deprecated .HP persists until (1) another of
these macros is called with an explicit indent argument, or (2) .SH,
.SS, or .PP or its synonyms is called; these clear the indentation
entirely. Relative insets created by .RS move the left margin and
persist until .RS, .RE, .SH, or .SS is called.
The indentation amount exhibited by ordinary paragraphs set with .PP
(and its synonyms) not within an .RS/.RE relative inset, and the
default used when .IP, .RS, .TP, and the deprecated .HP are not given
an indentation argument, is 7.2n for typesetter devices and 7n for
terminal devices (but see the -rIN option). Headers, footers (both
set with .TH), and section headings (.SH) are set flush left and sub‐
section headings (.SS) are indented 3n (but see the -rSN option).
However, the HTML output device ignores indentation completely.
It may be helpful to think of the left margin and indentation as
related but distinct concepts; groff's implementation of the man
macro package tracks them separately. The left margin is manipulated
by .RS and .RE (and by .SH and .SS, which reset it to the default).
The other kind of indentation is controlled by the paragraphing
macros (though, again, .SH and .SS reset it). Indentation is imposed
by the .TP, .IP, and deprecated .HP macros, and cancelled by .PP and
its synonyms. An extensive example follows.
This ordinary (.PP) paragraph is not in a relative inset nor does it
possess an indentation.
Now we have created a relative inset (in other words, moved
the left margin) with .RS and started another block paragraph
with .PP.
tag This tagged paragraph, set with .TP, is still within
the .RS region, but lines after the first have a sup‐
plementary indentation that the tag lacks.
A paragraph like this one, set with .IP, will appear to
the reader as also associated with the tag above,
because .IP re-uses the previous paragraph's indenta‐
tion unless given an argument to change it. This para‐
graph is affected both by the moved left margin (.RS)
and ordinary indentation (.IP).
┌─────────────────────────────────┐
│This table is affected both by │
│the left margin and indentation. │
└─────────────────────────────────┘
· This indented paragraph has a bullet for a tag, making
it more obvious that the left margin and the paragraph
indentation are distinct; only the former affects the
tag, but both affect the text of the paragraph.
This ordinary (.PP) paragraph resets the indentation, but the
left margin is still inset.
┌────────────────────────────┐
│This table is affected only │
│by the left margin. │
└────────────────────────────┘
Finally, we have ended the relative inset by using .RE, which
(because we only used one .RS/.RE pair) has reset the left margin to
the default. This is an ordinary .PP paragraph.
Resist the temptation to mock up tabular or multi-column output with
horizontal tab characters or the indentation arguments to .IP, .TP,
.RS, or the deprecated .HP; the result may not render comprehensibly
on an output device you fail to check, or which is developed in the
future. The table preprocessor tbl(1) can likely meet your needs.
The following macros break the output line and insert vertical space:
.SH, .SS, .TP, .PP (and its synonyms), .IP, and the deprecated .HP.
The default inter-section and inter-paragraph spacing is is 1v for
terminal devices and 0.4v for typesetter devices (“v” is a unit of
vertical distance, where 1v is the distance between adjacent text
baselines in a single-spaced document). In .EX/.EE sections, the
inter-paragraph spacing is 1v regardless of output device. (The dep‐
recated macro .PD can change this vertical spacing, but its use is
discouraged.) The macros .RS, .RE, .EX, .EE, and .TQ also cause a
break but no insertion of vertical space.
Number registers
Number registers are described in section “Options” below.
Strings
The following strings are defined.
\*R expands to the special character escape for the “registered
sign” glyph, \(rg, if available, and “(Reg.)” otherwise.
\*S expands to an escape setting the point size to the document
default.
\*(HF expands to the font identifier used to print headings and sub‐
headings. The default is “B”. This string is a GNU exten‐
sion.
\*(lq
\*(rq expand to the special character escapes for left and right
double-quotation marks, \(lq and \(rq, respectively.
\*(Tm expands to the special character escape for the “trade mark
sign” glyph, \(tm, if available, and “(TM)” otherwise.
Interaction with preprocessors
When a preprocessor like tbl or eqn is needed, a hint can be given to
the man page formatter by making the first line of a man page look
like this:
'\" word
Note that the line starts with an apostrophe ('), not a dot, and that
a single space character follows the double quote. The word consists
of one letter for each needed preprocessor: “e” for eqn, “r” for
refer, and “t” for tbl. Modern implementations of the man program
can use this information to automatically call the required pre‐
processor(s) in the right order.
The usual tbl and eqn macros for table and equation inclusion, .TS,
.T&, .TE, .EQ, and .EN, may be used freely. Note that terminal
devices are extremely limited in presentation of mathematical equa‐
tions.
Portability
The two major syntactical categories of roff languages are requests
and escapes. Since the man macros are implemented in terms of groff
requests and escapes, one can, in principle, supplement the function‐
ality of man with these lower-level elements where necessary.
Note, however, that using raw groff requests (apart from the empty
request “.”) is likely to make your page render poorly when processed
by other tools; many of these attempt to interpret page sources
directly for conversion to HTML. Some requests make implicit assump‐
tions about things like character and page sizes that may not hold in
an HTML environment; also, many of these viewers don't interpret the
full groff vocabulary, a problem that can lead to portions of your
text being omitted or presented incomprehensibly.
For portability to modern viewers, it is best to write your page
entirely with the macros described in this page (except for the ones
identified as deprecated, which should be avoided). The macros we
have described as extensions (.EX/.EE, .SY/.OP/.YS, .TQ, .UR/.UE, and
.MT/.ME) should be used with caution, as they may not yet be built in
to some viewer that is important to your audience. If in doubt, copy
the implementation into your page—after the .TH call and the “Name”
section, to accommodate timid mandb implementations.
Similar caveats apply to escapes. Some escape sequences are however
required for correct typesetting even in man pages and usually do not
cause portability problems. Several of these render glyphs corre‐
sponding to punctuation code points in the Unicode basic Latin range
(U+0000–U+007F) that are handled specially in roff input; the escapes
below must be used to render them correctly and portably when docu‐
menting material that uses them syntactically—namely, any of the set
' - ^ ` ~ (apostrophe, dash or minus, caret, grave accent, tilde).
\" Comment. Everything after the double-quote to the end of the
input line is ignored. Whole-line comments are frequently
placed immediately after the empty request “.”).
\newline
Join the next input line to the current one. Except for the
update of the input line counter (used for diagnostic messages
and related purposes), a series of lines ending in backslash-
newline appears to groff as a single input line. Use this
escape to break excessively long input lines for document
maintenance.
\% Control hyphenation. If hyphenation is enabled, the location
of this escape within a word marks a hyphenation point, over‐
riding groff's hyphenation patterns. At the beginning of a
word, it suppresses hyphenation entirely.
\~ Adjustable, non-breaking space. Use this escape to prevent a
break inside a short phrase or between a numerical quantity
and its corresponding unit(s).
Before starting the motor,
set the output speed to\~1.
There are 1,024\~bytes in 1\~KiB.
CSTR\~#8 documents the B\~language.
\& Zero-width non-breaking space. Insert at the beginning of an
input line to prevent a dot or apostrophe from being inter‐
preted as the beginning of a roff request. Append to an end-
of-sentence punctuation sequence to keep it from being recog‐
nized as such.
\| Narrow (one-sixth em on typesetters, zero-width on terminals)
non-breaking space. Used primarily in ellipses (“.\|.\|.”)
to space the dots more pleasantly on typesetter devices like
PostScript and PDF.
\- Minus sign or basic Latin hyphen-minus. This escape produces
the Unix command-line option dash in the output. “-” is a
hyphen to roff; some output devices replace it with U+2010
(hyphen) or similar.
\(aq Basic Latin apostrophe. Some output devices replace “'” with
a right single quotation mark.
\(oq
\(cq Opening and closing single quotation marks.
Use these for paired directional single quotes, ‘like this’.
\(dq Basic Latin double-quote. Use in macro calls to prevent ‘"”
from being interpreted as beginning a quoted argument, or sim‐
ply for readability.
.BI split\~\(dq text \(dq
\(lq
\(rq Left and right double quotation marks.
Use these for paired directional double quotes, “like this”.
\(em Em-dash. Use for an interruption—such as this one—in a sen‐
tence.
\(en En-dash. Use to separate the ends of a range, particularly
between numbers; for example, “the digits 1–9”.
\(ga Basic Latin grave accent. Some output devices replace “`”
with a left single quotation mark.
\(ha Basic Latin circumflex accent (“hat”). Some output devices
replace “^” with U+02C6 (modifier letter circumflex accent) or
similar.
\(ti Basic Latin tilde. Some output devices replace “~” with
U+02DC (small tilde) or similar.
\c Suppress break at the end of the input line. Normally, the
end of an input line is treated like a space; an output line
may be broken there and will be in .EX/.EE examples. Anything
after \c on the input line is discarded. The next line is
interpreted as usual and can include a macro call (contrast
with \newline). This is occasionally useful when three dif‐
ferent fonts are needed in a single word.
Normally,
the final output file should be named
.IB file .pdf\c
\&.
Note that when using this trick with the .BI or .RI macros,
you will need to manually add an italic correction escape
“\/”, a GNU extension, before the \c due to way macros expand
their arguments—if you value the improved typesetter output
quality over the potential reduction in document portability.
Files processed with
.B groff \-mom
(or
.BI "\-m " mom\/\c
) produce PostScript output by default.
Alternatively, and perhaps with better portability, the \f
font style escape sequence can be used; see below. Using \c
to include the output from more than one input line into the
next-line argument of a .TP macro will render incorrectly with
groff 1.22.3, mandoc 1.14.1, older versions of these programs,
and perhaps with some other formatters.
\e Widely used in man pages to represent a backslash output
glyph. It works reliably as long as the “.ec” request is not
used, which should never happen in man pages, and it is
slightly more portable than the more explicit \(rs (“reverse
solidus”) special character escape sequence.
\fB, \fI, \fR, \fP
Switch to bold, italic, roman, or back to the previous style,
respectively. Either \f or \c is needed when three different
font styles are required in a word.
.RB [ \-\-reference\-dictionary=\fI\,name\/\fP ]
.RB [ \-\-reference\-dictionary=\c
.IR name ]
Style escapes may be more portable than \c. As shown above,
it is up to you to account for italic corrections with “\/”
and “\,”, which are themselves GNU extensions, if desired and
if supported by your implementation.
Note that \fP reliably returns to the style in use immediately
preceding the previous \f escape only if no sectioning, para‐
graph, or style macro calls have intervened.
As long as at most two styles are needed in a word, style
macros like .B and .BI usually result in more readable roff
source than \f escapes do.
For maximum portability, escape sequences and special characters not
listed above are better avoided in man pages.
Hooks
Two macros called internally by the groff man package to format page
headers and footers can be redefined by the administrator in a site's
man.local file (see section “Files” below). The default headers and
footers are documented in the description of .TH above. These macros
are GNU extensions and it makes no sense for a man page to call them.
.BT Set the page footer (“bottom trap”).
.PT Set the page header (“page trap”).
Deprecated features
Use of the following in man pages for public distribution is discour‐
aged.
.AT [ system [release]] Alter the footer for use with legacy AT&T
man pages, overriding any definition of the footer-inside
argument to .TH. This macro exists only for compatibility, to
render man pages from historical systems.
The first argument system can be:
3 7th edition (default)
4 System III
5 System V
The optional second argument release specifies the release
number, such as in “System V Release 3”.
.DT Set tab stops every 0.5 inches. Since this macro is always
called during a .TH macro, it makes sense to call it only if
the tab stops have been changed.
Use of this presentation-level macro is deprecated. It trans‐
lates poorly to HTML, under which exact space control and tab‐
ulation are not readily available. Thus, information or dis‐
tinctions that you use .DT to express are likely to be lost.
If you feel tempted to use it, you should probably be compos‐
ing a table using tbl(1) markup instead.
.HP [ indent] Set up a paragraph with a hanging left indentation.
The indent argument, if present, is handled as with .TP.
Use of this presentation-level macro is deprecated. While it
is universally portable to legacy Unix systems, a hanging
indentation cannot be expressed naturally under HTML, and
HTML-based man page processors may interpret it as starting a
ordinary paragraph. Thus, any information or distinction you
tried to express with the indentation may be lost.
.PD [ vertical-space] Define the vertical space between paragraphs
or (sub)sections. The optional argument vertical-space speci‐
fies the amount; the default scale indicator is ‘v’). Without
an argument, the spacing is reset to its default value; see
subsection “Horizontal and vertical spacing” above.
Use of this presentation-level macro is deprecated. It trans‐
lates poorly to HTML, under which exact control of inter-para‐
graph spacing is not readily available. Thus, information or
distinctions that you use .PD to express are likely to be
lost.
.UC [ version] Alter the footer for use with legacy BSD man pages,
overriding any definition of the footer-inside argument to
.TH. This macro exists only for compatibility, to render man
pages from historical systems.
The argument version can be:
3 3rd Berkeley Distribution (default)
4 4th Berkeley Distribution
5 4.2 Berkeley Distribution
6 4.3 Berkeley Distribution
7 4.4 Berkeley Distribution
History
Version 7 Unix (1979) introduced the man macro package and supported
all of the macros described in this page not listed as extensions,
except .P, .SB, and the deprecated .AT and .UC. The only strings
defined were R and S; no number registers were documented. .UC
appeared in 3BSD (1980) and .P in Unix System III (1980). 4BSD
(1980) added lq and rq strings. 4.3BSD (1986) added .AT and .P.
Version 9 Unix (1986) introduced .EX and .EE. Ultrix 11 (1988) added
the Tm string. SunOS 4.0 (1988) may have been the first to support
.SB.
The following groff options set number registers recognized and used
by the man macro package.
-rcR=1 Continuous rendering. Do not paginate the output; produce one
(potentially very long) output page. This is the default for
terminal and HTML devices. Use -rcR=0 to disable it.
-rC1 Number output pages continuously. If multiple man pages are
processed, number the output pages in strictly increasing
sequence, rather than resetting the page number to 1 at each
new man page.
-rCS=1 Capitalize section headings. Set section headings (the
argument(s) to .SH) in full capitals. This transformation is
off by default because it discards case distinction
information.
-rCT=1 Capitalize titles. Set the man page title (the first argument
to .TH) in full capitals in headers and footers. This
transformation is off by default because it discards case
distinction information.
-rD1 Enable double-sided layout. Format footers for even and odd
pages differently; see the description of .TH in subsection
“Document structure macros” above.
-rFT=footer-distance
Set distance of the footer, relative to the bottom of the page
if negative or top if positive, to footer-distance. The
default is -0.5i.
-rHY=mode
Set hyphenation mode, as documented in section “Hyphenation”
of groff(7). The default is 4 if continuous rendering is
enabled (-rcR=1 above), and 6 otherwise.
-rIN=standard-indent
Set the amount of indentation used for ordinary paragraphs
(.PP and its synonyms) and the default indentation amount used
by .IP, .RS, .TP, and the deprecated .HP. See subsection
“Horizontal and vertical spacing” above for the default. For
terminal devices, indent should always be an integer multiple
of unit ‘n’ to get consistent indentation.
-rLL=line-length
Set line length; the default is 78n for terminal devices and
6.5i for typesetter devices. If this option is not given, the
line length is set to respect any value set by a prior “.ll”
request (which must be in effect when the .TH macro is
invoked), if this differs from the built-in default for the
formatter.
Note that the use of an “.ll” request to initialize the line
length is supported for backward compatibility with some
versions of the man program; direct initialization of the LL
register should always be preferred to the use of such a
request. In particular, note that an “.ll 65n” request does
not preserve the default nroff line length (the man default
initialization to 78n prevails), whereas the -rLL=65n option,
or an equivalent “.nr LL 65n” request preceding the use of the
.TH macro, does set a line length of 65n.
-rLT=title-length
Set title length, used for headers and footers. If this
option is not given, the title length defaults to the line
length.
-rPn Start enumeration of pages at n rather than 1.
-rSpoint-size
Use point-size as the base document point size. Acceptable
values are 10, 11, or 12. See subsection “Font style macros”
above for the default.
-rSN=subsection-indent
Set indentation of the subsection heading to subsection-
indent. See subsection “Horizontal and vertical spacing”
above for the default indentation value.
-rXp After page p, number pages as pa, pb, pc, and so forth. For
example, the option -rX2 produces the following page numbers:
1, 2, 2a, 2b, 2c, and so on.
/usr/local/share/groff/1.22.4/tmac/man.tmac
/usr/local/share/groff/1.22.4/tmac/an.tmac
These are wrapper files to call andoc.tmac.
/usr/local/share/groff/1.22.4/tmac/andoc.tmac
This brief groff program detects whether the man or mdoc macro
package is being used by a document and loads the correct
macro definitions, taking advantage of the fact that pages
using them must call .TH or .Dd, respectively, as their first
macro. Because the wrappers above load this file, a man
program or user typing, for example, “groff -man page.1”, need
not know which package the file page.1 uses. Multiple man
pages, in either format, can be handled.
/usr/local/share/groff/1.22.4/tmac/an-old.tmac
Most man macros are contained in this file. It also loads the
extensions from an-ext.tmac (see below).
/usr/local/share/groff/1.22.4/tmac/an-ext.tmac
The extension macro definitions for .SY, .OP, .YS, .TQ,
.EX/.EE, .UR/.UE, and .MT/.ME are contained in this file,
which is written to be compatible with AT&T troff and
permissively licensed—not copylefted. Man page authors
concerned about portability to legacy Unix systems are
encouraged to copy these definitions into their pages, and
maintainers of troff implementations or work-alike systems
that format man pages are encouraged to re-use them.
Note that the definitions for these macros are read after the
call of .TH, so they will replace any macros of the same names
preceding it in your file. If you use your own
implementations of these macros, they must be defined after
calling .TH to have any effect.
/usr/local/share/groff/site-tmac/man.local
Put local changes and customizations into this file.
Some tips on troubleshooting your man pages follow.
· .RS doesn't indent relative to my indented paragraph
The .RS macro sets the left margin; that is, the position at
which an ordinary paragraph (.PP and its synonyms) will be
set. .RS, .IP, .TP, and the deprecated .HP all use the same
default indentation. To create an inset relative to an
indented paragraph, call .RS repeatedly until an acceptable
indentation is achieved, or give .RS an indentation argument
that is at least as much as the paragraph's indentation amount
relative to an adjacent .PP paragraph. See subsection
“Horizontal and vertical spacing” above for the values.
· .RE doesn't move the inset back to the expected level
· warning: scale indicator invalid in this context
· warning: number register 'an-saved-margin
n' not defined
· warning: number register 'an-saved-prevailing-indent
n' not defined The .RS macro takes an indentation amount as an
argument; the .RE macro's argument is a specific inset level.
.RE 1 goes to the level before any .RS macros were called,
.RE 2 goes to the level of the first .RS call you made, and so
forth. If you desire symmetry in your macro calls, simply
issue one .RE without an argument for each .RS that precedes
it.
After calls to the .SH and .SS sectioning macros, all relative
insets are cleared and calls to .RE have no effect until .RS
is used again.
The GNU version of the man macro package was written by James Clark
and contributors. The extension macros were written by Werner
Lemberg ⟨wl@gnu.org⟩ and Eric S. Raymond ⟨esr@thyrsus.com⟩.
This document was originally written for the Debian GNU/Linux system
by Susan G. Kleinmann ⟨sgk@debian.org⟩. It was corrected and updated
by Werner Lemberg and G. Branden Robinson. The extension macros were
documented by Eric S. Raymond; he also originated the portability
section, to which Ingo Schwarze contributed most of the material on
escape sequences.
Groff: The GNU Implementation of troff, by Trent A. Fisher and Werner
Lemberg, is the main groff documentation. You can browse it
interactively with “info groff”.
tbl(1), eqn(1), and refer(1) are preprocessors used with man pages.
man(1) describes the man page formatter on your system.
groff_mdoc(7) describes the groff version of the BSD-originated
alternative macro package for man pages.
groff(7), groff_char(7), man(7)
This page is part of the groff (GNU troff) project. Information
about the project can be found at
⟨http://www.gnu.org/software/groff/⟩. If you have a bug report for
this manual page, see ⟨http://www.gnu.org/software/groff/⟩. This
page was obtained from the project's upstream Git repository
⟨https://git.savannah.gnu.org/git/groff.git⟩ on 2020-08-13. (At that
time, the date of the most recent commit that was found in the repos‐
itory was 2020-08-12.) If you discover any rendering problems in
this HTML version of the page, or you believe there is a better or
more up-to-date source for the page, or you have corrections or
improvements to the information in this COLOPHON (which is not part
of the original manual page), send a mail to man-pages@man7.org
groff 1.22.4.234-3ba6 12 August 2020 groff_man_style(7)
Pages that refer to this page: groff_man(7)