Updated 03-Aug-2025
The other day I was looking at the Thai keyboard (a fascinating subject, especially when we have to distinguish between Unicode characters, Thai letters, and Thai script elements, and keyboard keys (these do not match up). I noticed there is no space in the Thai unicode standard. Which means a Thai keyboard maps to several different unicode spaces?
The Six Kinds of Space
Concerning space, as in typographic space, there are several:
- Space U+0020
- no-break space U+00A0
- zero width space U+200B
- word joiner U+2060
- ideographic space U+3000
- zero width no-break space U+FEFF
Note: Space and some other characters are blacklisted for use in IDNs (International domain names with non-ASCII characters), because of the potential for phishing abuse.