Word joiner

"ZWNBSP" and "Zero width no-break space" redirect here. For the Unicode character named ZERO WIDTH NO-BREAK SPACE, see Byte order mark.

Not to be confused with Zero-width joiner.

The word joiner (WJ) is a Unicode format character which is used to indicate that line breaking should not occur at its position.^[1] It does not affect the formation of ligatures or cursive joining and is ignored for the purpose of text segmentation.^[1] It is encoded since Unicode version 3.2 (released in 2002) as U+2060 WORD JOINER (⁠).

The word joiner replaces the zero-width no-break space (ZWNBSP, U+FEFF), as a usage of the no-break space of zero width. The ZWNBSP is originally and currently used as the byte order mark (BOM) at the start of a file. However, if encountered elsewhere, it should, according to Unicode, be treated as a word joiner, a no-break space of zero width.

The deliberate use of U+FEFF for this purpose is deprecated as of Unicode 3.2, with the word joiner strongly preferred.^[1][2]

See also

• Byte order mark, which uses U+FEFF ZERO WIDTH NO-BREAK SPACE (ZWNBSP) character
• Zero-width space
• Zero-width joiner, which in scripts such as Arabic or Indic causes two characters to be shown in a connected form, even if they would otherwise not.

References

1. "Layout Controls" (PDF). The Unicode Standard, Version 12.0.0. The Unicode Consortium. p. 871.
2. FAQ - UTF-8, UTF-16, UTF-32 & BOM, ”What should I do with U+FEFF in the middle of a file?“.