Spaces behind \textgreater not working as expected

Question

I have the following code:

 \textit{WMC \textgreater   average}

But the text looks like this:

WMC >average

It does not even change if I add even more spaces. So what am I doing wrong?

Answer 1

This is because commands gobble spaces. The simple work around is to type \textgreater{} to terminate the command, which will restore the space after the command. See the linked TeX FAQ entry for other possible solutions.

Answer 2

Another option is to use the xspace package if you don't want to manually insert a space after each use, to intelligently insert a space as needed:

Notes:

• Granted that this is very unlikely usage for \textgreater (where you would not want a space after the symbol), but using \xspace is useful in other similar situations such as Have a space after \texttrademark oder any kind of characters.

Code:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{xspace}

\let\OldTextgreater\textgreater
\renewcommand{\textgreater}{\OldTextgreater\xspace}%

\begin{document}
WMC \textgreater  average.

Using \verb|\textgreater| yields \textgreater.
\end{document}