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Klaus Linke Klaus Linke is offline
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Default Adding break characters to Word

"Suzanne S. Barnhill" wrote:
Use the No-Width Optional Break from the Special Characters tab of Insert
| Symbol. Note that it has a rather strange appearance if you have
nonprinting characters displayed.


Also note that both Word 2003 and 2007 don't actually insert a no-width
optional break (or "zero width space" as everybody but MS calls it: U+200B),
but a zero width non-joiner (U+200C).

http://www.unicode.org/versions/Unicode4.0.0/ch15.pdf
"The U+200B "zero width space" indicates a word boundary, except that it has
no width.
[...] The zero-width spaces are not to be confused with zero-width joiner
characters. U+200C "zero width non-joiner" and U+200D "zero width joiner"
have no effect on word boundaries"
The latter two "provide a way to influence joining and ligature glyph
selection".

Microsoft's naming and usage seem wrong to me. I think I bugged it in the
Wd2007 Beta, but it wasn't fixed.
The only change that was made is that both characters now look the same.
Formerly, U+200C had a different look, with non-printing characters
displayed. At least that was the case in Word 2000...

Klaus