This little document lists the various space characters in Unicode. For a description, consult chapter 6 Writing Systems and Punctuation and block description General Punctuation in the Unicode standard.
The third column of the following table shows the appearance of the space character, in the sense that the cell contains the words “foo” and “bar” in bordered boxes separated by that character. It is possible that your browser does not present all the space characters properly. This depends on the font used, on the browser, and on the fonts available in the system.
| Code | Name of the character | Sample | Width of the character |
|---|---|---|---|
| U+0020 | SPACE | foo bar | Depends on font, typically 1/4 em, often adjusted |
| U+00A0 | NO-BREAK SPACE | foo bar | As a space, but often not adjusted |
| U+1680 | OGHAM SPACE MARK | foo bar | Unspecified; usually not really a space but a dash |
| U+180E | MONGOLIAN VOWEL SEPARATOR | foobar | No width |
| U+2000 | EN QUAD | foo bar | 1 en (= 1/2 em) |
| U+2001 | EM QUAD | foo bar | 1 em (nominally, the height of the font) |
| U+2002 | EN SPACE | foo bar | 1 en (= 1/2 em) |
| U+2003 | EM SPACE | foo bar | 1 em |
| U+2004 | THREE-PER-EM SPACE | foo bar | 1/3 em |
| U+2005 | FOUR-PER-EM SPACE | foo bar | 1/4 em |
| U+2006 | SIX-PER-EM SPACE | foo bar | 1/6 em |
| U+2007 | FIGURE SPACE | foo bar | “Tabular width”, the width of digits |
| U+2008 | PUNCTUATION SPACE | foo bar | The width of a period “.” |
| U+2009 | THIN SPACE | foo bar | 1/5 em (or sometimes 1/6 em) |
| U+200A | HAIR SPACE | foo bar | Narrower than THIN SPACE |
| U+200B | ZERO WIDTH SPACE | foobar | Nominally no width, but may expand |
| U+202F | NARROW NO-BREAK SPACE | foo bar | Narrower than NO-BREAK SPACE (or SPACE) |
| U+205F | MEDIUM MATHEMATICAL SPACE | foo bar | 4/18 em |
| U+3000 | IDEOGRAPHIC SPACE | foo bar | The width of ideographic (CJK) characters. |
| U+FEFF | ZERO WIDTH NO-BREAK SPACE | foobar | No width (the character is invisible) |
In the Unicode standard, U+200B and U+FEFF are not included in the table of space characters, as they have no width and are not supposed to have any visible glyph.
In general, web browsers and other programs should not be expected to render all space characters according to their definitions or descriptions. If the font used for text does not contain a glyph for a space character, a symbol of missing glyph may appear instead.
In my original tests, on Windows XP with IE 6, using Times New Roman or Arial as the font, the page showed only the first two (space, no-break space) and the last two (ideographic space, zero-width no-break space) correctly, presenting the other space characters as small rectangles that indicate unrepresentable glyphs or as spaces of incorrect width. When Arial Unicode MS is used, all but the narrow no-break space (which was added to Unicode in version 3.0) are shown correctly. (Newer versions of Arial, but not Arial Unicode MS, contain the narrow no-break space.) Code2000 shows all the space characters correctly, but it has not been installed on most computers.
More modern browsers can usually find a glyph for a character if some of the fonts in the system contain it. This does not always take place, however, especially on IE. See Guide to using special characters in HTML.
The use of various space characters of specific
width, such as THIN SPACE,
is generally risky.
Consider using other methods, such as the
features of a text processing program or (on Web pages) CSS properties like
padding,
margin,
word-spacing,
and
letter-spacing.
In text processing, Web page display, and other contexts, space characters are often “adjustable” in the sense that they are presented in different widths, especially to satisfy justification requirements.
No-break spaces, on the other hand, are defined in Unicode as having the same width as spaces, and this corresponds to common practice. But they are often treated as having fixed width (in each font), which means that in adjusted text, spaces and no-break spaces have different effects.
On web browsers, no-break spaces tended to be non-adjustable,
but some modern browsers stretch them on justification.
Within
justified text on web pages,
authors have used no-break spaces instead of normal spaces
to prevent stretching (e.g., as in 5 m instead
of 5 m). Due to changes in browser behavior,
it is better to use fixed-width spaces instead. Among then, the four-per-em
space
(e.g., as in 5 m)
usually best corresponds to the width of a normal unstretched
space. However, the fixed-width spaces act as normal spaces
in line breaking, so you may wish to use some technique to
prevent undesired line breaks
(e.g.,
e.g., as in <nobr>5 m</nobr>).
The Unicode standard describes the adjustment process and the intended role of specific-width space characterss as follows:
The fixed-width space characters (U+2000..U+200A) are derived from conventional (hot lead) typography. Algorithmic kerning and justification in computerized typography do not use these characters. However, where they are used, as, for example, in typesetting mathematical formulae, their width is generally font-specified, and they typically do not expand during justification. The exception is U+2009 THIN SPACE, which sometimes gets adjusted.
The ZERO-WIDTH SPACE character has nominally no width, but it too may be expanded during justification.
The EM QUAD character is canonical equivalent to EM SPACE. The intended difference seems to be in the code chart note for the latter: “may scale by the condensation factor of a font”. However, there is no such note for EN SPACE to make it any different from EN QUAD.
The MEDIUM MATHEMATICAL SPACE character was added in Unicode version 4.0.
Regarding the non-breaking property of no-break space and other characters, see Unicode line breaking rules: explanations and criticism.
See also Microsoft’s Space Characters Design Standards. It explicitly says: “In digital fonts there are only two kinds of space characters supported by most computers, the space and the no-break space.”
Alan Wood’s excellent Unicode resources contain a page on the General Punctuation block, with widths of space characters illustrated graphically.
See also: Styling spaces in CSS.
This paragraph is here for demonstration purposes only, and it contains normal SPACE characters between words.
This paragraph is here for demonstration purposes only, and it contains SIX-PER EM SPACE characters instead of normal SPACE characters between words.
There are some graphic characters that can be used a symbols for a space. Though sometimes called visible spaces, they are not spaces at all but visible notations used to indicate the appearance of spaces in instruction manuals and descriptions of texts.
The following table lists some symbols, in decreasing order by practical usefulness. Their shapes vary by font; especially the last one varies a lot.
| ␣ | U+2423 | OPEN BOX |
| ␢ | U+2422 | BLANK SYMBOL |
| ␠ | U+2420 | SYMBOL FOR SPACE |