  We discuss the possibility that, besides roughening, a vicinal surface could
display preroughening (PR), and consider the possible mechanisms for its
promotion. Within the framework of a terrace-step-kink model, it turns out that
a PR transition is possible, and could be induced by a short-range repulsion
between parallel kinks along the same step or on adjacent steps, or even by
some kind of extended range step-step repulsion. We discuss the possible
relevance of this phenomenon to the anomalous roughening behaviour recently
reported for Ag(115).
