Any program (person), that produces man pages, should check the output for defects by using (both groff and nroff) [gn]roff -mandoc -t -ww -b -z -K utf8 The same goes for man pages that are used as an input. For a style guide use mandoc -T lint -.- Any "autogenerator" should check its products with the above mentioned 'groff', 'mandoc', and additionally with 'nroff ...'. It should also check its input files for too long (> 80) lines. This is just a simple quality control measure. The "autogenerator" may have to be corrected to get a better man page, the source file may, and any additional file may. Common defects: Not removing trailing spaces (in in- and output). The reason for these trailing spaces should be found and eliminated. "git" has a "tool" to point out whitespace, see for example "git-apply(1)" and git-config(1)") Not beginning each input sentence on a new line. Line length and patch size should thus be reduced. The script "reportbug" uses 'quoted-printable' encoding when a line is longer than 1024 characters in an 'ascii' file. See man-pages(7), item "semantic newline". -.- The difference between the formatted output of the original and patched file can be seen with: nroff -mandoc > nroff -mandoc > diff -d -u and for groff, using \"printf '%s\n%s\n' '.kern 0' '.ss 12 0' | groff -mandoc -Z - \" instead of 'nroff -mandoc' Add the option '-t', if the file contains a table. Read the output from 'diff -d -u ...' with 'less -R' or similar. -.-. If 'man' (man-db) is used to check the manual for warnings, the following must be set: The option \"-warnings=w\" The environmental variable: export MAN_KEEP_STDERR=yes (or any non-empty value) or (produce only warnings): export MANROFFOPT=\"-ww -b -z\" export MAN_KEEP_STDERR=yes (or any non-empty value) -.-