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
• 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: « Arrêtez ! », dit-il.
• measurements (and other numbers with units): the 100 m dash.

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.