I am using the
acmsmall template and my inline formulas are being broken at equal signs and arrows; how can I prevent them from being typeset like that globally (i.e. without having to put tildes everywhere)?
Increase the penalty for line breaks at relation symbols and binary operators:
If you simply include these commands in your preamble (between
equations will never be broken - this may, however, destroy your layout!
TeX will choose another break point, if there is one, or warn about an
Diabonas's answer shows how to avoid such breaks globally, and correctly warns about the dangers of doing so.