Zero Width Space

[Guest]

I've heard there is such a creature -- lets you use a slash, but lets
the work break at the right margin. So typing "petitioner/respondent"
can do a line break thusly:

* * * petitioner/
respondent * * *

In Word 2000, how do I get a zero-width space?
<*((((><{
(e-mail address removed)

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

See http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/Formatting/NoWidthSpace.htm

 

[Jay Freedman]

Unfortunately, in Word 2000 you can do that only if you're writing in
an Asian language. You can insert a "no-width optional break" from the
Insert > Symbol > Special Characters dialog, but it doesn't work in
English. You need at least Word 2002 to get this functioning
correctly. See
http://wordtips.vitalnews.com/Pages/T1277_Line_Breaks_After_a_Slash.html
for details.

--
Regards,
Jay Freedman
Microsoft Word MVP
Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the
newsgroup so all may benefit.

 

[Jay Freedman]

Unfortunately, in Word 2000 you can do that only if you're writing in
an Asian language. You can insert a "no-width optional break" from the
Insert > Symbol > Special Characters dialog, but it doesn't work in
English. You need at least Word 2002 to get this functioning
correctly. See
http://wordtips.vitalnews.com/Pages/T1277_Line_Breaks_After_a_Slash.html
for details.

Of course, I should have checked
http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/Formatting/NoWidthSpace.htm before I blurted
out the wrong answer...

--
Regards,
Jay Freedman
Microsoft Word MVP
Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the
newsgroup so all may benefit.

 

[Klaus Linke]

Yes, the "zero-width space" U+200B should work fine in Word2000 and above,
AFAIK, if you find a way to insert it (... the article lists a few).

One problem is that the "no-width optional break" from "Insert > Symbols >
Special characters" inserts something else, the "zero-width non-joiner"
U+200C.

Not sure what that is for -- It seems made to disable ligatures that a
program would normally do at that point, but since Word doesn't do
[automatic] ligatures, at least in Latin scripts, I'm baffled what it is
good for.
Or why it's listed in "Special characters", or why Microsoft uses other
confusing names instead of those from the Unicode Standard...

Klaus