• 20 space characters
  • Checked October 2026

Non Breaking Space

Copy a non-breaking space, or type it with Alt+0160; em, en, thin, hair and figure spaces follow.

Non Breaking Space

 No-break spaceU+00A0Ready to copy

20 space characters. Tap any value to copy it.

20 space characters. A character and its name both copy the character. A code copies the code.
CharacterNameCode pointAlt codeHTMLLaTeX
U+00A0. The non-breaking space, NBSP for short: as wide as an ordinary space, but a line never breaks at it. Alt+0160 or Alt+255 on a number pad, and   in HTML.
U+0020. The ordinary space from the space bar, where a line may break. Its number in ASCII is 32, so Alt+32 types it too.
U+2003. One em wide, and an em is the size of the type: at 12 point, 12 points. Unicode's other name for it is mutton.   in HTML.
U+2002. Half an em. Unicode's other name for it is nut.   in HTML.
U+2009. About a fifth or sixth of the em, by Unicode’s note, and meant to be clearly slimmer than the space-bar space. A web page names it  .
U+200A. The finest of the set: Unicode’s note puts it at a tenth to a sixteenth of the em. A web page names it  .
U+2007. Matches the tabular digits of a font, usually the zero, which keeps the figures of a table under one another.   names it in a web page.

Next step Invisible text of any length

How it works

The non breaking space is U+00A0 in Unicode,   in HTML, NBSP for short. It looks like an ordinary space, but a line of text never breaks at it. Its Alt code is 0160, or 255.

Read the full guide

What a non-breaking space does

Software may break a line wherever an ordinary space falls. A non-breaking space, also written nonbreaking space, stops that: between 100 and km it keeps the two together, and if they do not fit they move to the next line as one. A web page also collapses a run of ordinary spaces into one; non-breaking spaces do not collapse.

The other Unicode spaces

An em space is as wide as the type size, and an en space is half of that. A thin space is typically a fifth or a sixth of an em, and a hair space is thinner still. A figure space is as wide as a digit.

  • The narrow no-break space, U+202F, is as narrow as a thin space and does not break.
  • ␣ and ⍽ are visible signs that show where a space is; they are not spaces.
  • The zero width space, U+200B, takes no room at all and is for line break control.

Questions and answers

What is the Alt code for a non breaking space?

Alt+0160 on the number pad, or Alt+255. The first is its place in code page 1252, the second its place in code page 437, and both type U+00A0. The ordinary space is Alt+32. The em, en, thin and hair spaces are in neither code page.

What is the Unicode character for a space?

U+0020 is the ordinary space. The non-breaking space is U+00A0, the en space U+2002, the em space U+2003, the thin space U+2009 and the hair space U+200A. Unicode defines twenty-five whitespace characters in all.

Is whitespace a special character?

A whitespace character is a character like any other: it has a code point and can be copied. What is special is that nothing is drawn. Among the HTML special characters,  ,  ,   and   name four of them.

What is the non breaking space symbol?

The character itself shows nothing. Where a visible symbol is needed, ⍽ is the sign for a non-breaking space and ␣ the sign for an ordinary one.

Can I copy and paste a whitespace character?

Yes. Each blank row holds one real character, although nothing of it can be seen. Pasted into text it behaves as that space does: the hair space stays hair thin, and the non-breaking one holds its words together.

All 20 space characters

Start here 7

  • Em space U+2003. One em wide, and an em is the size of the type: at 12 point, 12 points. Unicode's other name for it is mutton.   in HTML.
  • En space U+2002. Half an em. Unicode's other name for it is nut.   in HTML.
  • Figure space U+2007. Matches the tabular digits of a font, usually the zero, which keeps the figures of a table under one another.   names it in a web page.
  • Hair space U+200A. The finest of the set: Unicode’s note puts it at a tenth to a sixteenth of the em. A web page names it  .
  • No-break space U+00A0. The non-breaking space, NBSP for short: as wide as an ordinary space, but a line never breaks at it. Alt+0160 or Alt+255 on a number pad, and   in HTML.
  • Space U+0020. The ordinary space from the space bar, where a line may break. Its number in ASCII is 32, so Alt+32 types it too.
  • Thin space U+2009. About a fifth or sixth of the em, by Unicode’s note, and meant to be clearly slimmer than the space-bar space. A web page names it  .
Show all 20 space characters (13 more)

Spaces of a set width 6

  • Four-per-em space U+2005. A quarter of an em, also known as a mid space.   in HTML.
  • Ideographic space U+3000. A fullwidth blank: Unicode classes it as wide as one kanji or kana cell.
  • Medium mathematical space U+205F. Four-eighteenths of an em, for spacing in formulas; MMSP for short.   in HTML.
  • Punctuation space U+2008. Set to the width of the period in the font in use, by Unicode’s note.   names it in a web page.
  • Six-per-em space U+2006. The em cut in six. Typesetting on screen often treats it as the thin space, Unicode remarks.
  • Three-per-em space U+2004. A third of an em, also known as a thick space.   in HTML.

Spaces that do not break 2

  • Narrow no-break space U+202F. A non-breaking space as narrow as a thin space; NNBSP for short. It came with Unicode 3.0 (1999) and is in neither Alt code table.
  • Word joiner U+2060. A non-breaking space with no width at all: it only forbids a line break between its two neighbors. ⁠ in HTML.

No width 1

  • Zero width space U+200B. No width, and the opposite job: it marks a place where a line may break, without showing a gap. ZWSP for short.

Signs that show a space 4

  • Blank symbol U+2422. A small b struck through. Unicode glosses it as a graphic for space.
  • Open box U+2423. A visible sign for an ordinary space, drawn as a low bracket.
  • Shouldered open box U+237D. A visible sign for the non-breaking space, for charts and keyboard diagrams that must show one.
  • Symbol for space U+2420. Two tiny capitals, S over P on a diagonal, standing for the space in charts of control codes.

How this list was compiled: Names, and the code points they belong to, are checked against UnicodeData.txt, version 18.0.0 (https://www.unicode.org/Public/18.0.0/ucd/UnicodeData.txt), and printed in sentence case. Notes that begin Unicode's note quote NamesList.txt of the same version (https://www.unicode.org/Public/18.0.0/ucd/NamesList.txt); the version a character was added in is from DerivedAge.txt (https://www.unicode.org/Public/18.0.0/ucd/DerivedAge.txt), block names are from Blocks.txt, and the years are from https://www.unicode.org/history/publicationdates.html. Alt codes are from the code page 437 table (https://www.unicode.org/Public/MAPPINGS/VENDORS/MICSFT/PC/CP437.TXT), the PC graphics table for codes 1 to 31 (https://www.unicode.org/Public/MAPPINGS/VENDORS/MISC/IBMGRAPH.TXT) and the code page 1252 table (https://www.unicode.org/Public/MAPPINGS/VENDORS/MICSFT/WINDOWS/CP1252.TXT). Option keys are those of the U.S. keyboard layout as CLDR records it (https://github.com/unicode-org/cldr/blob/release-42/keyboards/osx/en-t-k0-osx.xml); other layouts differ. HTML entity names are from https://html.spec.whatwg.org/entities.json. LaTeX macros are listed only when LaTeX's own fontdef.dtx, ltoutenc.dtx or utf8ienc.dtx (https://github.com/latex3/latex2e/tree/develop/base) or the amssymb source (https://ctan.org/pkg/amsfonts) defines them, matched to a code point through unicode-math-table.tex (https://github.com/latex3/unicode-math). Compose sequences are from the X.org en_US.UTF-8 Compose file (https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/xorg/lib/libx11/-/blob/master/nls/en_US.UTF-8/Compose.pre). The rows are chosen from the characters whose Unicode name has the word space, found by a search of UnicodeData.txt; the widths are those of Unicode's own notes in NamesList.txt. The Alt code of the ordinary space is its place in the code page 437 table. What a non-breaking space does, the example, collapsing in a web page and the year of the narrow one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-breaking_space. The count of whitespace characters: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whitespace_character. The em: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Em_(typography). All read on 2026-10-02 and restated in this site's own words. The Start here group and the order are this site's own choice. Licence: own work (facts from the Unicode Character Database, Unicode License v3, and from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0, restated in this site's own words; aliases and notes marked as Unicode's are quoted from NamesList.txt, Copyright © 1991-2026 Unicode, Inc., https://www.unicode.org/license.txt)

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