Imagine you intend to have "x=" in your document, followed by something that cannot be rendered in math mode, nor within some sort of box within math mode. Is there a preferred way to treat the right operand of the equals sign? Perhaps one of the following?
$x=$ something
$x={}$ something
$x=\mathord{}$ something
$x=\mathstrut$ something
or any of the above without the space between the closing dollar sign and the 's'? Or just go with whatever looks good to you?
So far I've been going with
$x={}$something
But it was suggested to me that this is a hack, and that maybe
$x=\mathstrut$something
would be preferred.
\text{}
to insert in math mode, but if it is impossible to insertsomething
in math, then the first is the closest one. Without too much effort.$x=$ something
and definitely not$x=$something
. I had some automated LaTeX stuff going on where the space after closing math mode was not automatically generated. It looked bad, so that's when I started putting empty right operands in there. But it turns out I just need a space character after closing math mode.$x=$ something
and$x={}$something
. Is it a sure thing that the former is better? To my understanding the latter is actually balancing space around the equals sign better.something
is just the word "something", and so therefore insertible within the math mode, then$x={}$something
seems to agree with$x=\text{something}$
whereas$x=$ something
does not.