@w{text}: Prevent Line Breaks ¶@w{text} outputs text, while prohibiting line
breaks within text.
Thus, you can use @w to produce a non-breakable space, fixed at
the width of a normal interword space:
@w{ } @w{ } @w{ } indentation.
produces:
indentation.
The space from @w{ }, as well as being non-breakable,
also will not stretch or shrink. Sometimes that is what you want, for
instance if you’re doing manual indenting. However, usually you want
a normal interword space that does stretch and shrink (in the printed
output); for that, see the @tie command in the next section.
In printed output, you can also use the @w command to prevent
a long name or phrase being automatically hyphenated, for example if
it happens to fall near the end of a line.
You can also use @w to avoid unwanted keyword expansion in
source control systems. For example, to literally write $Id$
in your document, use @w{$}Id$. This trick isn’t effective
for output files in some output formats, though.