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In computer-based text processing and digital typesetting, a non-breaking space or no-break space (NBSP) is a variant of the space character that prevents an automatic line break (line wrap) at its position. It is also known as a hard space or fixed space.

Contents 1 Explanation 2 Use in hiding folders 3 Use as non-collapsing whitespace 4 Use in typesetting 5 Encodings 6 Keyboard entry methods 7 Other types 8 See also 9 External links

Explanation

The difference between an NBSP and a normal space is that, when a string including the NBSP comes at the end of the line, and is too long to fit, it will move the whole string to the next line (including the strings that the NBSP connects to). This is analogous to how normal strings wrap. For example, the string "ambidextrously" will never be "broken", and neither will the string "am bi dextrous ly" when the spaces are nonbreaking.

Use in hiding folders

A Non-breaking space can used to make invisible folders by using this character as the title, then changing the icon to one of the blank spaces in the "Change Icon" box.

Use as non-collapsing whitespace

A second common application of the NBSP characters is in plain text file formats for word processing applications (e.g., SGML, HTML, TeX, LaTeX) that treat sequences of white-space characters (such as space, newline, tabulator, form feed, etc.) exactly as if they were a single character. Such collapsing of whitespace allows the author of the plain text file to neatly arrange the text in this form (e.g., by line breaks and indentation), without affecting the typeset result of the line-breaking algorithm.

The no-break space character is not merged with any other neighboring whitespace characters in such applications, and can therefore be used by an author to explicitly insert additional visible space in the formatted text.

Some people decry the use of NBSP for creating non-blanking space. They suggest alternatives, of which the Unicode space characters are perhaps closest to the NBSP mechanism.

  will create an "en space". Here are two xs with an en space between them: x x.

  will create an "em space". Here are two xs with an em space between them: x x.

Unicodes 8196-8202 provide a range of other spaces, but they don't move from narrowest to widest across that range of Unicodes.

Use in typesetting

Non-breaking spaces are used in typesetting where visual separation does not imply line-breakability. Examples are the spaces between words and punctuation in traditional typesetting's spacing rules. In French spacing, for example, a non-breaking space is inserted between words and their enclosing quotation marks and between the last word of a sentence and a question mark.

Encodings

• In Unicode and ISO/IEC 10646, NBSP is U+00A0.
• In ISO/IEC 8859, NBSP is 0xA0.
• In KOI8-R, NBSP is 0x9A.
• In EBCDIC, it is 0x41.
• In CP437 and CP850, NBSP is 0xFF.
• In SGML and HTML, the character entity reference   or the numeric character references   or   represent NBSP.
• In Wikitext, the character entity reference   often represents NBSP.
• In TeX and LaTeX, a tilde (~) is used to denote the hard space.
• In ASCII, there is no non-breaking space.

Keyboard entry methods

None of the existing national or international standards on keyboard layouts currently define an input method for the NBSP character. Therefore, the authors of keyboard drivers or application programs (e.g., word processors) had to invent their own keyboard shortcuts. For example:

• OPTION+SPACE: Mac OS
• ALT+0160: Microsoft Windows
• COMPOSE, SPACE, SPACE: Linux
• CTRL+K N S: vim (see vim digraphs)
• CTRL+SHIFT+SPACE: Microsoft Word, Dreamweaver
• CTRL+SPACE: WordPerfect, OpenOffice.org
• CTRL+SHIFT+U00A0: GNOME
• Insert | Symbol dialog box (Latin-1 subset, after ~): many office applications

Other types

Unicode defines several other no-break space characters that differ from the regular space in width:

• No-break thin space, known in Unicode as "NARROW NO-BREAK SPACE" (U+202F). This is required for French punctuation (before ?, ! or ;).
• Word joiner, encoded in Unicode 3.2 and above as U+2060. The word-joiner does not normally produce any space but prohibits a line break on either side of it.
• The Byte Order Mark, U+FEFF, officially named "ZERO WIDTH NO-BREAK SPACE", can also be used with the same meaning as the word joiner, but in current documents this use is deprecated.

See also

• Hard space
• Space (punctuation)
• Word wrap
• List of XML and HTML character entity references
• French spacing#Computer software
• Wikipedia:Line break handling

External links

• http://www.sightspecific.com/~mosh/WWW_FAQ/nbsp.html
• http://yesterdayishere.com/wordpress/arhiva/2007/08/11/what-nbsp-means-and-does/ (What NBSP is for... and NOT for.)
• http://www.trygve.com/doomsday.html (A witty plea that NBSP not be used for non-collapsing white space.)

Wikipedia content modification information:

• This page was last modified on 28 December 2008, at 01:29.

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