emphasis and not emphasis in the same word

Question

In ReStructuredText, is it possible to have emphasis and no emphasis in the same word? For example:

*emph*not-emph

leading to "emph no-emph", but with no white space in between? I can't find a way to do it, not even with a substitution.

Answer 1

What you are looking for is Character-Level Inline Markup. The description from the reStructuredText specification is (emphasis mine):

It is possible to mark up individual characters within a word with backslash escapes [...] Backslash escapes can be used to allow arbitrary text to immediately follow inline markup.

The two examples provided in the specification are:

1. For a single character immediately following inline markup:

    Python ``list``\s use square bracket syntax.
   

2. For arbitrary text immediately following inline markup:

    Possible in *re*\ ``Structured``\ *Text*, though not encouraged.
   

So to achieve the output you want, you need to use the backslash-escaped whitespace pattern:

*emph*\ not-emph

The reason this is required is because the inline markup recognition rules require that:

Inline markup end-strings must end a text block or be immediately followed by

• whitespace,
• one of the ASCII characters - . , : ; ! ? \ / ' " ) ] } > or
• a non-ASCII punctuation character with Unicode category Pd (Dash), Po (Other), Pe (Close), Pf (Final quote), or Pi (Initial quote).

Note that the use of that pattern above is discouraged in the reStructuredText specification:

The use of backslash-escapes for character-level inline markup is not encouraged. Such use is ugly and detrimental to the unprocessed document's readability. Please use this feature sparingly and only where absolutely necessary.