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Florian Pigorsch
Florian Pigorsch

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Regular and Unusual "Space" Characters

Regular Space Characters

U+0020 SPACE

This is the regular space character as produced by pressing the space bar of your keyboard.

U+00A0 NO-BREAK SPACE

A fixed space that prevents an automatic line break at its position. Abbreviation: NBSP

U+2000 EN QUAD

A 1 en (= 1/2 em) wide space, where 1 em is the height of the current font.

U+2001 EM QUAD

A 1 em wide space, where 1 em is the height of the current font.

U+2002 EN SPACE

A 1 en (= 1/2 em) wide space, where 1 em is the height of the current font.

U+2003 EM SPACE

A 1 em wide space, where 1 em is the height of the current font.

U+2004 THREE-PER-EM SPACE

A 1/3 em wide space, where 1 em is the height of the current font. "Thick Space".

U+2005 FOUR-PER-EM SPACE

A 1/4 em wide space, where 1 em is the height of the current font. "Mid Space".

U+2006 SIX-PER-EM SPACE

A 1/6 em wide space, where 1 em is the height of the current font.

U+2007 FIGURE SPACE

A space character that is as wide as fixed-width digits. Usually used when typesetting vertically aligned numbers.

U+2008 PUNCTUATION SPACE

A space character that is as wide as a perido (".").

U+2009 THIN SPACE

A 1/6 em - 1/4 em wide space, where 1 em is the height of the current font.

U+200A HAIR SPACE

Narrower than the "THIN SPACE", usually the thinnest space character.

U+202F NARROW NO-BREAK SPACE

A narrow form of a no-break space, typically the width of a "THIN SPACE". Abbreviation: NNBSP.

U+205F MEDIUM MATHEMATICAL SPACE

A 4/18 em wide space, where 1 em is the height of the current font. Usually used when typesetting mathematical formulas.

U+3000 IDEOGRAPHIC SPACE

Regular Space Characters with Zero Width

U+200B ZERO WIDTH SPACE

Literally a zero-width space character.

‌U+200C ZERO WIDTH NON-JOINER

When placed between two characters that would otherwise be connected into a ligature, a ZWNJ causes them to be printed in their final and initial forms, respectively.

‍U+200D ZERO WIDTH JOINER

When placed between two characters that would otherwise not be connected, a ZWJ causes them to be printed in their connected forms (ligature). Also used to join emoji with modifier characters.

U+2060 WORD JOINER

A zero width non-breaking space. Abbreviation: WJ.

U+FEFF ZERO WIDTH NO-BREAK SPACE

The zero width no-break space (ZWNBSP) is a deprecated use of the Unicode character at code point U+FEFF. Character U+FEFF is intended for use as a Byte Order Mark (BOM) at the start of a file. However, if encountered elsewhere, it should, according to Unicode, be treated as a "zero width no-break space". The deliberate use of U+FEFF for this purpose is deprecated as of Unicode 3.2, with the word joiner strongly preferred.

Non-Space Characters that Act Like Spaces

The following characters are probably the most interesting: they act like regular space characters, but are typically not considered as such. Because of this, they can often be used in places where a single (regular) space character is not allowed (e.g. as a Youtube video title, in nick names in popular games, etc.).

U+180E MONGOLIAN VOWEL SEPARATOR

The MVS is a word-internal thin whitespace that may occur only before the word-final vowels U+1820 MONGOLIAN LETTER A and U+1821 MONGOLIAN LETTER E. It determines the specific form of the character preceding it, selects a special variant shape of these vowels, and produces a small gap within the word. It is no longer classified as space character (i.e. in Zs category) in Unicode 6.3.0, even though it was in previous versions of the standard.

U+2800 BRAILLE PATTERN BLANK

The Braille pattern "dots-0", also called a "blank Braille pattern", is a 6-dot or 8-dot braille cell with no dots raised. It is represented by the Unicode code point U+2800, and in Braille ASCII with a space. In all Braille systems, the Braille pattern dots-0 is used to represent a space or the lack of content. In particular some fonts display the character as a fixed-width blank. However, the Unicode standard explicitly states that it does not act as a space.

U+3164 HANGUL FILLER

The Hangul Filler character is used to introduce eight-byte Hangul composition sequences and to stand in for an absent element (usually an empty final) in such a sequence. Unicode includes the Wansung code Hangul Filler in the Hangul Compatibility Jamo block for round-trip compatibility, but uses its own system (with its own, differently used, filler characters) for composing Hangul.

Visible Space Characters

␠ U+2420 SYMBOL FOR SPACE

␢ U+2422 BLANK SYMBOL

␣ U+2423 OPEN BOX

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