It forces the covariate to enter the equation before the factor levels.

# Example call to demonstrate.  `Species` is a Factor.  Petal.Length, Petal.Width are numeric.
# see `help(formula)` for more details on the formula specification.  `:` is "effect modification" or "interaction"
> summary(lm(Petal.Length ~ Petal.Width + Species + Petal.Width:Species, data = iris))
...
Petal.Width:Speciesversicolor   1.3228     0.5552   2.382   0.0185 *
Petal.Width:Speciesvirginica    0.1008     0.5248   0.192   0.8480
...