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@devinschumacher
Last active August 25, 2025 02:13
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The "invisible" / "blank" / "empty space" characters
tags
zero width space
zero width non-joiner
zero width joiner
soft hyphen

Invisible "blank" Characters: How to write invisible characters (zero width space, zero width non-joiner, zero width joiner & soft hyphen

I think only 2 of these are "copy-able":

  1. Zero-width space:
  2. Zero-width non-joiner: ‌‌‌
  3. Zero-width joiner:
  4. Soft hyphen: ­
  • Note: I had to wrap these in links to get ALL of them to be "copy-able":
  1. Zero-width space:
  2. Zero-width non-joiner:
  3. ‍Zero-width joiner:
  4. Soft hyphen: ­

Invisible Characters (HTML Entities)

  1. Zero-width space: ​
  2. Zero-width non-joiner: ‌
  3. Zero-width joiner: ‍
  4. Soft hyphen: ­

Invisible Characters (Unicode Escape Sequences)

  1. Zero-width space: \u200B
  2. Zero-width non-joiner: \u200C
  3. Zero-width joiner: \u200D
  4. Soft hyphen: \u00AD

Accessing through a GUI (mac)

Mac has a built-in Character Viewer that allows you to insert special characters, including invisible ones.

  1. Press Command + Control + Space to open the Character Viewer.
  2. Search for the specific invisible character you want (e.g., "zero width space").
  3. Double-click the character to insert it into your text.
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devinschumacher commented Jun 20, 2024

🔖 BOOKMARK THIS LINK so you always have it ready to copy/paste!

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