12.6 @tie{}: Inserting an Unbreakable Space

The @tie{} command produces a normal interword space at which a line break may not occur. Always write it with following (empty) braces, as usual for commands used within a paragraph. Here’s an example:

@TeX{} was written by Donald E.@tie{}Knuth.

produces:

TeX was written by Donald E. Knuth.

There are two important differences between @tie{} and @w{ }:

• The space produced by @tie{} will stretch and shrink slightly along with the normal interword spaces in the paragraph; the space produced by @w{ } will not vary.
• @tie{} allows hyphenation of the surrounding words, while @w{ } inhibits hyphenation of those words (for TeXnical reasons, namely that it produces an ‘\hbox’).