groff -mandoc creating "ESC[1m" versus overstriking with backspace for bold text

I found that groff uses different ways to indicate bold text for the utf8 output format. On FreeBSD 14, groff emits escape codes for a terminal (ESC, [1m): $ printf ".Dd today\n.Sh NAME\n" | groff -mandoc -Tutf8 | od -c 0000000 \n 033 [ 1 m N A M E 033 [ 0 m \n [...] On Linux (debian Bookworm) is uses backspaces and overstriking: $ printf ".Dd today\n.Sh NAME\n" | groff -mandoc -Tutf8 | od -c [...] 0000120 N \b N A \b A M \b M E \b E \n Why is it so and is there a way to make Linux groff also use ESC codes for the terminal? I have read the groff man page from top to bottom but can't find an option to change this behavior. (I need to post-process the result and ESC codes make that much easier and flexible.) **EDIT**: The solution (thanks go to @egmont) was to read Debian's grotty(1) manual and then force the SGR behavior with printf ".Dd today\n.Sh NAME\n" | GROFF_SGR=y groff -mandoc -Tutf8