diff --git a/tools/tools/fixwhite/fixwhite.1 b/tools/tools/fixwhite/fixwhite.1
index 852a390261ed..ccf5ecec03dc 100644
--- a/tools/tools/fixwhite/fixwhite.1
+++ b/tools/tools/fixwhite/fixwhite.1
@@ -41,6 +41,8 @@ and prints the result to standard output.
 It removes leading and trailing empty lines from the input, as well as
 trailing whitespace characters from ever line of text.
 Multiple successive empty lines are merged together.
+If the whitespace at the beginning of a sentence is exactly a multiple
+of eight spaces, the whitespace is replaced by tabs.
 Also, spaces preceeding tabs will be merged into the tab character.
 .Sh AUTHORS
 .An Ed Schouten Aq ed@FreeBSD.org
diff --git a/tools/tools/fixwhite/fixwhite.c b/tools/tools/fixwhite/fixwhite.c
index 276ae2e6fb41..903a5a355651 100644
--- a/tools/tools/fixwhite/fixwhite.c
+++ b/tools/tools/fixwhite/fixwhite.c
@@ -110,6 +110,19 @@ savewhite(char c, bool leading)
 static void
 printwhite(void)
 {
+	off_t i;
+
+	/* Merge spaces at the start of a sentence to tabs if possible. */
+	if ((column % 8) == 0) {
+		for (i = 0; i < column; i++)
+			if (!peekbyte(i + 1, ' '))
+				break;
+		if (i == column) {
+			queuelen -= column;
+			for (i = 0; i < column; i += 8)
+				queue[queuelen++] = '\t';
+		}
+	}
 
 	if (fwrite(queue, 1, queuelen, stdout) != queuelen) {
 		perror("write");