Nonbreaking space
In computing, a nonbreaking space (NBSP) is a special space character that prevents an automatic line break (line wrap) at its position. It is also known as a hard space or fixed space.
Uses
Here are some situations in which a nonbreaking space should be used. (Note that you will not be able to see the effects of the space unless your screen is fairly narrow.)
- Compound proper names: van der Waerden
- Titles: Mr. Jones
- Parts of a document: Chapter 12
- Between the dots of an ellipsis: . . .
- Mathematics: x² + 3
- Enumeration of cases in running text: (1) Genesis
- Languages such as French when punctuation should be preceded or followed by a space: « Arrętez ! », dit-il.
- Measurements (and other numbers with units): the 100 m dash.
- Numbers over a thousand, where a space is used instead of a period or comma to separate groups of three digits: 16 384
Encodings
- In some versions of Extended ASCII, character 255 (0xFF) serves as a nonbreaking space.
- In ISO 8859-1, NBSP is 0xA0.
- In Unicode, it is U+00A0 and is called the No-Break Space.
- In HTML, the entity is written as or  .
- In TeX, a tilde (~) is used to denote the hard space.
Word processors may use different methods to enter a nonbreaking space on the keyboard and store it in different ways internally. For example, the standard shortcut in Microsoft Word is the CTRL+SHIFT+SPACE combination. In OpenOffice.org, the shortcut is CTRL+SPACE.