> They fscked up when they decided to omit the dot when multiplying. So now it's impossible to differentiate between "varname" and "var*name".
Well, since we don't use multi-letter variable names, no such distinction is necessary! But if, for some reason, we did do so, then these two cases would be typeset in LaTeX as \(varname\) and \(var\,name\) (or, rather, \(\mathit{var}\) and \(\mathit{var}\,\mathit{name}\), since TeX correctly interprets \(var\) as semantically `var` anyway).
Well, since we don't use multi-letter variable names, no such distinction is necessary! But if, for some reason, we did do so, then these two cases would be typeset in LaTeX as \(varname\) and \(var\,name\) (or, rather, \(\mathit{var}\) and \(\mathit{var}\,\mathit{name}\), since TeX correctly interprets \(var\) as semantically `var` anyway).