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Wikipedia

Non-breaking space

January 21, 2023

"⍽" redirects here. Not to be confused with ␣ or ⌴.
For Wikipedia's related guideline, see MOS:NBSP.

In word processing and digital typesetting, a non-breaking space,  , also called NBSP, required space,[1] hard space, or fixed space (though it is not of fixed width), is a space character that prevents an automatic line break at its position. In some formats, including HTML, it also prevents consecutive whitespace characters from collapsing into a single space.

 
Non-breaking space
In UnicodeU+00A0   NO-BREAK SPACE ( ,  )
See also
U+202F   NARROW NO-BREAK SPACE

U+0020   SPACE (Note: Representations here of a regular space are replaced with a no-break space)

Other types of spaces

Non-breaking space characters with other widths also exist.

Uses and variations

Despite having layout and uses similar to those of whitespace, it differs in contextual behavior.[2][3]

Non-breaking behavior

Text-processing software typically assumes that an automatic line break may be inserted anywhere a space character occurs; a non-breaking space prevents this from happening (provided the software recognizes the character). For example, if the text "100 km" will not quite fit at the end of a line, the software may insert a line break between "100" and "km". An editor who finds this behavior undesirable may choose to use a non-breaking space between "100" and "km". This guarantees that the text "100 km" will not be broken: if it does not fit at the end of a line, it is moved in its entirety to the next line.

Non-collapsing behavior

A second common application of non-breaking spaces is in plain text file formats such as SGML, HTML, TeX and LaTeX, whose rendering engines are programmed to treat sequences of whitespace characters (space, newline, tab, form feed, etc.) as if they were a single character (but this behavior can be overridden). Such "collapsing" of whitespace allows the author to neatly arrange the source text using line breaks, indentation and other forms of spacing without affecting the final typeset result.[4][5]

In contrast, non-breaking spaces are not merged with neighboring whitespace characters when displayed and can therefore be used by an author to simply insert additional visible space in the resulting output without using spans styled with peculiar values of the CSS "white-space" property. Conversely, indiscriminate use (see the recommended use in style guides), in addition to a normal space, gives extraneous space in the output.

Width variation

Other non-breaking variants, defined in Unicode:

U+202F   NARROW NO-BREAK SPACE (NNBSP)

It was introduced in Unicode 3.0 for Mongolian,[6] to separate a suffix[7] from the word stem without indicating a word boundary. It is also required for big punctuation in French where it is called espace fine insécable and sometimes inaccurately referred to as "double punctuation" (before ;, ?, !, », › and after «, ‹; today often also before :), in Russian (before em dash [—]), and in German between multi-part abbreviations (e.g. "z. B.", "d. h.", "v. l. n. r.").[8] When used with Mongolian, its width is usually one third of the normal space; in other contexts, its width is about 70% of the normal space but may resemble that of the thin space (U+2009), at least with some fonts.[9] Also starting from release 34 of Unicode Common Locale Data Repository (CLDR) the NNBSP is used in numbers as thousands group separator for French and Spanish locale.[10][11]

U+2007   FIGURE SPACE ( )

Produces a space equal to the figure (0–9) characters.

U+2060 WORD JOINER (⁠ · WJ)

Encoded in Unicode since version 3.2. The word-joiner does not produce any space and prohibits a line break at its position.

Example

On browsers, resizing the window will demonstrate the effect of non-breaking spaces on the texts below.

To show the non-breaking effect of the non-breaking space, the following words have been separated with non-breaking spaces:

Lorem Ipsum Dolor Sit Amet Consectetur Adipiscing Elit Sed Do Eiusmod Tempor Incididunt Ut Labore Et Dolore Magna Aliqua Ut Enim Ad Minim Veniam Quis Nostrud Exercitation Ullamco Laboris Nisi Ut Aliquip Ex Ea Commodo Consequat Duis Aute

To show the non-collapsing behavior of the non-breaking space, the following words have been separated with an increasing number of non-breaking spaces:

Lorem Ipsum  Dolor   Sit    Amet     Consectetur      Adipiscing       Elit        Sed         Do          Eiusmod           Tempor            Incididunt             Ut              Labore               Et                Dolore                 Magna                  Aliqua                   Ut                    Enim                     Ad                      Minim

In contrast, the following words are separated with ordinary spaces:

Lorem Ipsum Dolor Sit Amet Consectetur Adipiscing Elit Sed Do Eiusmod Tempor Incididunt Ut Labore Et Dolore Magna Aliqua Ut Enim Ad Minim Veniam Quis Nostrud Exercitation Ullamco Laboris Nisi Ut Aliquip Ex Ea Commodo Consequat Duis Aute

Encodings

Character information
Preview       ⁠
Unicode name NO-BREAK SPACE FIGURE SPACE NARROW NO-BREAK SPACE WORD JOINER
Encodings decimal hex dec hex dec hex dec hex
Unicode 160 U+00A0 8199 U+2007 8239 U+202F 8288 U+2060
UTF-8 194 160 C2 A0 226 128 135 E2 80 87 226 128 175 E2 80 AF 226 129 160 E2 81 A0
Numeric character reference             ⁠ ⁠
Named character reference  ,     ⁠
ISO/IEC 8859 (1–16) / ECMA-94 160 A0
Windows code pages: 1250, 1251, 1252, 1253, 1254, 1255, 1256, 1257, 1258 160 A0
KOI8-R, KOI8-U 154 9A
DOS code pages: 437, 850, 851, 852, 853, 855, 856, 857, 858, 859, 860, 861, 862, 863, 864, 865, 866, 867, 869 255 FF
HP Roman-8, HP Roman-9 160 A0
LICS 154 9A
TeX ~ \,
EBCDIC hex: 41 – RSP, Required Space

In Unicode, the Byte order mark (BOM), U+FEFF, may be interpreted as a "zero width no-break space", but is a deprecated alternative to word joiner (U+2060).

Keyboard entry methods

It is rare for national or international standards on keyboard layouts to define an input method for the non-breaking space. An exception is the Finnish multilingual keyboard, accepted as the national standard SFS 5966 in 2008. According to SFS 5966, the non-breaking space can be entered with the key combination AltGr + Space.[12]

Typically, authors of keyboard drivers and application programs (e.g., word processors) have devised their own keyboard shortcuts for the non-breaking space. For example:

System/application Entry method
Microsoft Windows Alt+0160 or Alt+255 (does not always work)
macOS ⌥ Opt+Space
Linux or Unix using X11 Compose, Space, Space or AltGr+Space
AmigaOS Alt+Space
GNU Emacs Ctrl+X 8 Space
Vim Ctrl+K, Space, Space; or Ctrl+K, ⇧ Shift+N, ⇧ Shift+S
Dreamweaver, LibreOffice, Microsoft Word,
OpenOffice.org (since 3.0), AutoCAD 		Ctrl+⇧ Shift+Space[note 1]
FrameMaker, LyX (non-Mac), OpenOffice.org (before 3.0),
WordPerfect 		Ctrl+Space
Mac Adobe InDesign ⌥ Opt+⌘ Cmd+X
Python programming language '\N{NO-BREAK SPACE}'[13]

Apart from this, applications and environments often have methods of entering unicode entities directly via their code point, e.g. via the Alt Numpad input method. (Non-breaking space has code point 255 decimal (FF hex) in codepage 437 and codepage 850 and code point 160 decimal (A0 hex) in codepage 1252.)

See also

Notes

  1. ^ On Windows 10 systems, Ctrl+⇧ Shift will by default switch keyboard configurations if more than one keyboard has been configured for the current language.

References

  1. ^ IBM (1998) [1995]. "Windows, Latin 1". REGISTRY, Graphic Character Sets and Code Pages. CPGID 01252.
  2. ^ Elyaakoubi, Mohamed; Lazrek, Azzeddine (2010). "Justify Just or Just Justify". The Journal of Electronic Publishing. 13. doi:10.3998/3336451.0013.105.
  3. ^ "Special Characters". The Chicago Manual of Style Online.
  4. ^ "Structure", HTML 4.01, W3, 1999-12-24.
  5. ^ "Text", CSS 2.1, W3.
  6. ^ ISO/IEC 10646-1:1993/FDAM 29:1999(E)
  7. ^ Mongolian NNBSP-connected suffixes
  8. ^ Solbrig, Amelie (30 January 2008). (PDF) (in German). Hochschule für Technik, Wirtschaft und Kultur Leipzig. p. 58 (PDF p. 113). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2016-03-11. Retrieved 10 June 2018. Alle Abkürzungen mit Binnenpunkten werden im Deutschen mit einem gFL [geschütztes flexibles Leerzeichen] spationiert. [...] Die englische Schreibweise sieht keine Abstände zwischen einzelnen Buchstaben vor. Nach einem Binnenpunkt folgt demnach ohne gFL sofort der nächste Buchstabe.
  9. ^ "Writing Systems and Punctuation" (PDF). The Unicode Standard 7.0. Unicode Inc. 2014. Retrieved 2014-11-02.
  10. ^ "CLDR Chart: Numbers".
  11. ^ RAE; RAE. "punto | Diccionario panhispánico de dudas". «Diccionario panhispánico de dudas» (in Spanish). Retrieved 2022-01-07.
  12. ^ Kotoistus (2006-12-28), [Status of the new keyboard layout] (presentation) (in Finnish and English), CSC – IT Center for Science, archived from the original on 2011-07-27. Drafts of the Finnish multilingual keyboard.
  13. ^ Python Software Foundation. "Unicode HOWTO¶". Python 3.10.6 documentation. Retrieved 19 August 2022.

January 21, 2023
breaking, space, redirects, here, confused, with, wikipedia, related, guideline, nbsp, word, processing, digital, typesetting, breaking, space, also, called, nbsp, required, space, hard, space, fixed, space, though, fixed, width, space, character, that, preven. redirects here Not to be confused with or For Wikipedia s related guideline see MOS NBSP In word processing and digital typesetting a non breaking space also called NBSP required space 1 hard space or fixed space though it is not of fixed width is a space character that prevents an automatic line break at its position In some formats including HTML it also prevents consecutive whitespace characters from collapsing into a single space Non breaking spaceIn UnicodeU 00A0 NO BREAK SPACE amp nbsp amp NonBreakingSpace See alsoU 202F NARROW NO BREAK SPACE U 0020 SPACE Note Representations here of a regular space are replaced with a no break space Other types of spacesNon breaking space characters with other widths also exist Contents 1 Uses and variations 1 1 Non breaking behavior 1 2 Non collapsing behavior 1 3 Width variation 2 Example 3 Encodings 4 Keyboard entry methods 5 See also 6 Notes 7 ReferencesUses and variations EditDespite having layout and uses similar to those of whitespace it differs in contextual behavior 2 3 Non breaking behavior Edit Text processing software typically assumes that an automatic line break may be inserted anywhere a space character occurs a non breaking space prevents this from happening provided the software recognizes the character For example if the text 100 km will not quite fit at the end of a line the software may insert a line break between 100 and km An editor who finds this behavior undesirable may choose to use a non breaking space between 100 and km This guarantees that the text 100 km will not be broken if it does not fit at the end of a line it is moved in its entirety to the next line Non collapsing behavior Edit A second common application of non breaking spaces is in plain text file formats such as SGML HTML TeX and LaTeX whose rendering engines are programmed to treat sequences of whitespace characters space newline tab form feed etc as if they were a single character but this behavior can be overridden Such collapsing of whitespace allows the author to neatly arrange the source text using line breaks indentation and other forms of spacing without affecting the final typeset result 4 5 In contrast non breaking spaces are not merged with neighboring whitespace characters when displayed and can therefore be used by an author to simply insert additional visible space in the resulting output without using spans styled with peculiar values of the CSS white space property Conversely indiscriminate use see the recommended use in style guides in addition to a normal space gives extraneous space in the output Width variation Edit Other non breaking variants defined in Unicode U 202F NARROW NO BREAK SPACE NNBSP It was introduced in Unicode 3 0 for Mongolian 6 to separate a suffix 7 from the word stem without indicating a word boundary It is also required for big punctuation in French where it is called espace fine insecable and sometimes inaccurately referred to as double punctuation before and after today often also before in Russian before em dash and in German between multi part abbreviations e g z B d h v l n r 8 When used with Mongolian its width is usually one third of the normal space in other contexts its width is about 70 of the normal space but may resemble that of the thin space U 2009 at least with some fonts 9 Also starting from release 34 of Unicode Common Locale Data Repository CLDR the NNBSP is used in numbers as thousands group separator for French and Spanish locale 10 11 U 2007 FIGURE SPACE amp numsp Produces a space equal to the figure 0 9 characters U 2060 WORD JOINER amp NoBreak WJ b Encoded in Unicode since version 3 2 The word joiner does not produce any space and prohibits a line break at its position Example EditOn browsers resizing the window will demonstrate the effect of non breaking spaces on the texts below To show the non breaking effect of the non breaking space the following words have been separated with non breaking spaces Lorem Ipsum Dolor Sit Amet Consectetur Adipiscing Elit Sed Do Eiusmod Tempor Incididunt Ut Labore Et Dolore Magna Aliqua Ut Enim Ad Minim Veniam Quis Nostrud Exercitation Ullamco Laboris Nisi Ut Aliquip Ex Ea Commodo Consequat Duis Aute To show the non collapsing behavior of the non breaking space the following words have been separated with an increasing number of non breaking spaces Lorem Ipsum Dolor Sit Amet Consectetur Adipiscing Elit Sed Do Eiusmod Tempor Incididunt Ut Labore Et Dolore Magna Aliqua Ut Enim Ad Minim In contrast the following words are separated with ordinary spaces Lorem Ipsum Dolor Sit Amet Consectetur Adipiscing Elit Sed Do Eiusmod Tempor Incididunt Ut Labore Et Dolore Magna Aliqua Ut Enim Ad Minim Veniam Quis Nostrud Exercitation Ullamco Laboris Nisi Ut Aliquip Ex Ea Commodo Consequat Duis AuteEncodings EditCharacter information Preview Unicode name NO BREAK SPACE FIGURE SPACE NARROW NO BREAK SPACE WORD JOINEREncodings decimal hex dec hex dec hex dec hexUnicode 160 U 00A0 8199 U 2007 8239 U 202F 8288 U 2060UTF 8 194 160 C2 A0 226 128 135 E2 80 87 226 128 175 E2 80 AF 226 129 160 E2 81 A0Numeric character reference amp 160 wbr amp xA0 wbr amp 8199 wbr amp x2007 wbr amp 8239 wbr amp x202F wbr amp 8288 wbr amp x2060 wbr Named character reference amp nbsp amp NonBreakingSpace amp numsp amp NoBreak ISO IEC 8859 1 16 ECMA 94 160 A0Windows code pages 1250 1251 1252 1253 1254 1255 1256 1257 1258 160 A0KOI8 R KOI8 U 154 9ADOS code pages 437 850 851 852 853 855 856 857 858 859 860 861 862 863 864 865 866 867 869 255 FFHP Roman 8 HP Roman 9 160 A0LICS 154 9ATeX EBCDIC hex 41 RSP Required SpaceIn Unicode the Byte order mark BOM U FEFF may be interpreted as a zero width no break space but is a deprecated alternative to word joiner U 2060 Keyboard entry methods EditIt is rare for national or international standards on keyboard layouts to define an input method for the non breaking space An exception is the Finnish multilingual keyboard accepted as the national standard SFS 5966 in 2008 According to SFS 5966 the non breaking space can be entered with the key combination AltGr Space 12 Typically authors of keyboard drivers and application programs e g word processors have devised their own keyboard shortcuts for the non breaking space For example System application Entry methodMicrosoft Windows Alt 0160 or Alt 255 does not always work macOS Opt SpaceLinux or Unix using X11 Compose Space Space or AltGr SpaceAmigaOS Alt SpaceGNU Emacs Ctrl X 8 SpaceVim Ctrl K Space Space or Ctrl K Shift N Shift SDreamweaver LibreOffice Microsoft Word OpenOffice org since 3 0 AutoCAD Ctrl Shift Space note 1 FrameMaker LyX non Mac OpenOffice org before 3 0 WordPerfect Ctrl SpaceMac Adobe InDesign Opt Cmd XPython programming language N NO BREAK SPACE 13 Apart from this applications and environments often have methods of entering unicode entities directly via their code point e g via the Alt Numpad input method Non breaking space has code point 255 decimal FF hex in codepage 437 and codepage 850 and code point 160 decimal A0 hex in codepage 1252 See also EditHyphens in computing for information about hard and non breaking hyphens List of XML and HTML character entity references Non breaking hyphen Punctuation mark used to join words Punctuation System of rules of grammar of written languages typically not expressed verbally Plenken Typographical error in German language Sentence spacing in digital media Horizontal width of inter sentence space Space punctuation Blank area that separates text Space punctuation Non breaking space for applications Zero width space Special character in text processing a non spacing break Widows and orphans In typography an isolated word on a line Non printing character in word processors Formatting marks for content design Typographic alignment JustifiedNotes Edit On Windows 10 systems Ctrl Shift will by default switch keyboard configurations if more than one keyboard has been configured for the current language References Edit IBM 1998 1995 Windows Latin 1 REGISTRY Graphic Character Sets and Code Pages CPGID 01252 Elyaakoubi Mohamed Lazrek Azzeddine 2010 Justify Just or Just Justify The Journal of Electronic Publishing 13 doi 10 3998 3336451 0013 105 Special Characters The Chicago Manual of Style Online Structure HTML 4 01 W3 1999 12 24 Text CSS 2 1 W3 ISO IEC 10646 1 1993 FDAM 29 1999 E Mongolian NNBSP connected suffixes Solbrig Amelie 30 January 2008 Zweisprachige Mikrotypografie PDF in German Hochschule fur Technik Wirtschaft und Kultur Leipzig p 58 PDF p 113 Archived from the original PDF on 2016 03 11 Retrieved 10 June 2018 Alle Abkurzungen mit Binnenpunkten werden im Deutschen mit einem gFL geschutztes flexibles Leerzeichen spationiert Die englische Schreibweise sieht keine Abstande zwischen einzelnen Buchstaben vor Nach einem Binnenpunkt folgt demnach ohne gFL sofort der nachste Buchstabe Writing Systems and Punctuation PDF The Unicode Standard 7 0 Unicode Inc 2014 Retrieved 2014 11 02 CLDR Chart Numbers RAE RAE punto Diccionario panhispanico de dudas Diccionario panhispanico de dudas in Spanish Retrieved 2022 01 07 Kotoistus 2006 12 28 Uusi nappainasettelu Status of the new keyboard layout presentation in Finnish and English CSC IT Center for Science archived from the original on 2011 07 27 Drafts of the Finnish multilingual keyboard Python Software Foundation Unicode HOWTO Python 3 10 6 documentation Retrieved 19 August 2022 Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title Non breaking space amp oldid 1131227889, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

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