Breaking ligatures should be done with {}, \hbox{} or soemthing like that.
Using an italic correction, \/, will do the *wrong thing* on slanted or italic
words that are not split where you hide the ligature. In upright fonts allmost
all the italic corrections are zero so you will not notice the potential brain
damage most of the time.
An empty group or box is a method of hiding ligatures sanvctioned by the
TeXbook and gauranteed to be invisble. Itaiic corrections might not be
invisble and are thus the *wrong thing*. I sippose that \/\unskip might be OK
but an empty group or box seems to make more sense. Before you ask \unskip is
a plain TeX operation that removes a preceding skip.
--
Duncan (-:
"software industry, the: unique industry where selling substandard goods is
legal and you can charge extra for fixing the problems."
