It lets your browser know when it’s okay to break a word onto a new line, without hyphenating it. The paradoxically named zero-width space has one odd job to do. This means you can use this space places where you normally can’t, like in URLs. So, it displays as blank or sometimes six hollow dots. It’s meant to represent a braille pattern with six non-raised dots. This is my favourite-its not really a space.

The Em space is the width of a capital M, which also happens to be the height of most fonts. The three-per-em space and four-per-em spaces are one third and one fourth the width of an em. The ideographic space, similar to the figure space, is used with fixed-width CJK (Chinese Japanese Korean) characters. Its width is the same as one of the numerals. Ī figure space is used solely for spacing fixed-width numerals. This space is used in those circumstances. Some languages have whitespace before a punctuation mark. The punctuation space takes up as much width as a period. Reginald said ‘don't use nested quotations’ ” Thin Space One specific use of the thin space is for seperating quotes in nested quotations:Ĭlive told me “Prof. Just like the hair space they’re used to create a little extra space between characters.īoth are roughly one sixth of an Em in width. You can use the hair space to add kerning (space between two individual letters) in circumstances where you normall can’t, like on social media.įor example, the 𝔻𝕠𝕦𝕓𝕝𝕖 𝕊𝕥𝕣𝕦𝕔𝕜 characters generated by the Fancy Font Generator? can have terrible 𝕜𝕖𝕣𝕟𝕚𝕟𝕘. Use the hair space when two characters are just a tiny bit closer than you’d like. You can space two words, like normal, without the possibility of them being on separate lines. If it’s important to the flow of your writing that two words never be apart, you should insert a no-break space. The word space also tells your word processor, or web browser when it’s okay to break onto another line-but this isn’t always what you want. The type designer of your chosen typeface will have taken this into account.ĭon't do this. So sentences already have more space between them than words. There 's a logic behind this-as the elements of your writing get bigger, so does the white space between them. Sometimes people add two spaces after a period. You know that already - but there’s still a couple of pitfalls to be aware of when using it. The word space is used to separate words and sentences. The word space is a character with an inherent conflict of interest: the space must be wide enough to separate individual words, but narrow enough to encourage grouping into sentences and paragraphs. It’s the most common whitespace character. The word space is the character you get when you press the space bar. Using them effectively can and help your writing seem more authoritative. While most of these characters do little but add some white space in very particular situations, it’s worth getting to know them a little. Online (particularly on social media) you’re often limited to the whitespace characters designated by Unicode. When designing a website or a document, you can use whitespace to distinguish important information. The more crowded a composition, the less weight is carried by each individual element. One common criticism of this website is that there’s too much “wasted space.” Web developers have a tendency to cram as much information on your screen as possible. Robert Bringhurst - The elements of typographic style Typographically, poise is made of whitespace. Using white space onlineīig type, even huge type, can be beautiful and useful.But poise is usually far more important than size – and poise consists primarily of emptiness. It’s as simple as that, yet it’s often white space that separates good design from bad-almost always because there isn’t enough of it. Generally speaking, white space is any empty area of a design or composition the margins in a book, or the sky in a painting: The most common whitespace character, is the word space The one you get when you press the space bar. Whitespace characters denote the empty space between all the characters you can actually see.They have width (height if you’re writing vertically), some special rules, and not much else. Quickly copy and paste Unicode whitespace characters - and learn how and when to use them.

Imvu characters blank and white