Empty Characters
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An empty character is simply a blank Unicode character (which does not appear on the browser). It can also be a text type character like : U+2000, U+2008, U+205F, etc.
Below, you can easily copy an empty character to past it anywhere you want.
Method 1:
Click the button below to copy an empty character to your clipboard. If this doesn't work on your device, use method 2.
Method 2: Manually
Double-click inside the below textarea, then press CTRL+c to copy.
Test it out:
Past the invisible character you just copied in the below texaera, then click the "Test" button to verify if it has been copied successfully.
What is an Empty character ?
An empty character, also refered to as null character, is similar to a simple whitespace, but is in reality a totally different Unicode character. There might be a need for you to use empty characters or invisible text in certain places for some reason: in a Word Document, in a web page or in a chat conversation. Well, sadly, we don't have magical ink, but we can use some functions to make the characters invisible by hiding the text, or use unicode empty characters.
Moreover, some hidden non-printing characters are available to help you with your text editing. These are different sorts of formatting elements and tags, but they are not printed with your document, despite the fact that they are displayed on the different browsers. The commonest non-printing characters are unbroken spaces, tabs, paragraph marks, normal spaces, etc.
One other way you may not heard of (to add hidden words to a documents) is the White Font method. As the name implies, the words do not show, they are written with white text color on a white background. As a result, this causes the text to be invisible to the eye, but they remain fully functional on your page.
You may also need to hide confidential information from others to see, using formatting tags is another way to do it. Your text is still available in the document, but it won't be displayed until you choose to reveal it. Just bear in mind that for example: the hidden text feature in Microsoft Word allows you to hide text in your document, but anyone who can edit the document can find the hidden words in the text. So be careful.
Where can I use these Empty characters ?
There are numerous types of invisible Unicode characters: special characters, language-specific padding characters, and the normal blank characters to name a few. All of them have their own specific significance and may be used for a wide variety of purposes instead of the typical space.
Invisible text and Empty characters could be employed in various manners:
Text Editors:There are times when you might not wish a phrase to appear in the next line. It is necessary to insert a space without moving to the next line if it is important that the two words should be visible next to each other. An example of this would be for prices and currencies. A blank character before a punctuation mark is also used as a non-line breaking space in certain languages.
Social Media Websites:On some sites, especially on Social Media websites, empty fields in forms or nicknames are usually not allowed. In such cases, you can instead easily copy & paste an empty character to meet the website requirements.
Emails and Chats Conversations:You can surprise your friends and have fun by sending empty messages or emails to your contacts on WhatsApp or Telegram for example. The truth is that these messaging networks don't give you permission to send blank messages. So it's the only way to do it.
Video Games:You can change your username using invisible characters, for example in Fortnite & PUBG, or in gaming-chats like Discord. By doing so, no one has any idea who is playing behind the screen.
List of Unicode Empty Characters
Here is a full list of Unicode blank characters. You can use any of them just by copy & pasting.
| Unicode | HTML | Description | Exemple | Copy |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| U+0020 |   | Space | [ ] | |
| U+00A0 |   | No-Break Space | [ ] | |
| U+2000 |   | En Quad | [ ] | |
| U+2001 |   | Em Quad | [ ] | |
| U+2002 |   | En Space | [ ] | |
| U+2003 |   | Em Space | [ ] | |
| U+2004 |   | Three-Per-Em Space | [ ] | |
| U+2005 |   | Four-Per-Em Space | [ ] | |
| U+2006 |   | Six-Per-Em Space | [ ] | |
| U+2007 |   | Figure Space | [ ] | |
| U+2008 |   | Punctuation Space | [ ] | |
| U+2009 |   | Thin Space | [ ] | |
| U+200A |   | Hair Space | [ ] | |
| U+2028 | 
 | Line Separator | [ ] | |
| U+205F |   | Medium Mathematical Space | [ ] | |
| U+3000 | 　 | Ideographic Space | [ ] |
Invisible Non-Printable Characters
Non-printed characters, or formatting tags, are symbols to help you with your editing in your favorite text editor but they can not be printed, even if they displayed on your screen.
To hide or show a non-printable characters, in text editors like ONLYOFFICE Docs, you can click on the appropriate icon on the top toolbar of the Home tab.
Non-printable characters can be : spaces, paragraph markers, line breaks, tags, uninterrupted spaces, section breaks, column breaks, page breaks, anchor symbols, end-of-cell & end-of-row markers in tables, small black squares in the left margin.
How to display a hidden text ?
To find hidden words (with the white font technique) in a given text, the only way is to copy the content from that web page and move it to a Word doc. Then, you have to use a different background color to identify the unreadable text by making the characters visible.
Difference between the use of empty character vs white font
A light font color matching the background color can be used to hide content on a web page. This prohibited method is widely used in Search Engine Optimization (SEO) techniques on web pages for keyword stuffing.
Spammers use this method to get better rankings in search engines results like Google, Bing or Yahoo by injecting the same keywords multiple times in a given text. Sometimes it is used to add hidden sentences that have nothing to do with the content on the page.
Sometime using empty characters is the only way to genuinely fix imperfect layouts by adding or removing parts of the text.