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Description of problem:
Not all backquotes are rendered as such in the man pages.
I think this is to do with some change in groff, where backtick
was rendered as single quote to make ``this'' type of thing
render as ''this''. However, some googling seemed to suggest
this should not happen. Ie: bare `, escaped \` or \(ga
should all render the same.
(Maybe it's partially a groff bug then...)

I consider this quite severe as the difference between a
backquote (`) and a single quote (') is quite critical in
unix programming!

Eg: man awk, line 580, renders as such:

  \'   matches the empty string  at the beginning of a
       buffer (string).
  \'   matches the empty string at the end of a buffer.

So which is right? (the top one should be \` not \')

The source for the awk man page: line 1392 shows the problem
(somewhat snipped to make it fit)
--------------------
.B \e`
matches the empty string at the beginning of a buffer
--------------------
Should be:
--------------------
.B \e\`
matches the empty string at the beginning of a buffer
--------------------

Then it renders correctly. Not every instance of ` has been
coded incorrectly however. Line 640 of the awk man page says:

   .....(E.g., in French,  a  plain  "e"  and  a
       grave-accented e` are equivalent.)

The ` is rendered correctly here. There are lots more of
these (argh!)


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How reproducible:
Always

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(as description)

Actual Results:  (as description)

Expected Results:  (as description)

Additional info: