The new software is 'helpfully' inserting registered trademark symbols

Is there a way I can override this?

e.g. Joe Blow (D) will face John Doe ® in this fall’s Arkanhoma senate race.

Similarly…
® <- ( r ) with no spaces
© <- ( c ) with no spaces
™ <- ( tm ) with no spaces

I can see how this would be generally helpful, but it is not helpful in every case. Is there an override?

How about “Joe Blow-D will face John Doe-R”?

I have several workarounds at my disposal, that’s not what I’m asking for here.

Sometimes I want open paren, R, close paren. Is there a way to do that?

(R) (C)

Use backslashes before the brackets. \(R\)

Thank you. Exactly what I was hoping for.

(R)

You actually only need the escape character in front of the second parenthesis: (R\) renders as (R)

Yep. Backslashes are how you escape any of Markdown’s special features. That’s why you have to type two of them to get one, like this:

\