nroff was (and one can only fear - still is) a UNIX word processing doohickey (if we must be technical). As Ma Bell, we funded Bell Labs, and as Bell Labs, the "best and brightest" occasionally produced something.
As users of UNIX, one of their more - or less - you properly surrounded the actual WORDS you wanted in your document with the precisely correct nroff commands (in concert with its evil sibling troff), you would get a beautiful printed document.
We take "a beautiful printed document" as granted in this day and age but back then, mastering this stuff (as ever, invented by Bell Labs, where reality rarely - if ever - touched the real world), each document printed correctly was a cause for celebration amongst us mortal worker bees.
Anxious workers would cluster around the only printer on the floor (this was WAY before HP invented obscenely expensive ink for their cheap printers) and we would watch as our names would print just before some indecipherable collection of letters would print, thereby identifying the idiot who hadn't mastered nroff.
Good times, good times.
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