A figure space or numeric space is a
typographic unit
Typographic units are the units of measurement used in typography or typesetting. Traditional typometry units are different from familiar metric units because they were established in the early days of printing. Though most printing is digital ...
equal to the size of a single
numerical digit
A numerical digit (often shortened to just digit) is a single symbol used alone (such as "2") or in combinations (such as "25"), to represent numbers in a positional numeral system. The name "digit" comes from the fact that the ten digits (Latin ...
. Its size can fluctuate somewhat depending on which
font
In metal typesetting, a font is a particular size, weight and style of a typeface. Each font is a matched set of type, with a piece (a " sort") for each glyph. A typeface consists of a range of such fonts that shared an overall design.
In mo ...
is being used. This is the preferred space to use in numbers. It has the same width as a digit and keeps the number together for the purpose of line breaking.
Standard
In
Unicode
Unicode, formally The Unicode Standard,The formal version reference is is an information technology standard for the consistent encoding, representation, and handling of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems. The standard, ...
it is assigned . Its HTML
character entity reference
Character or Characters may refer to:
Arts, entertainment, and media Literature
* ''Character'' (novel), a 1936 Dutch novel by Ferdinand Bordewijk
* ''Characters'' (Theophrastus), a classical Greek set of character sketches attributed to The ...
is .
Baudot code
The Baudot code is an early character encoding for telegraphy invented by Émile Baudot in the 1870s. It was the predecessor to the International Telegraph Alphabet No. 2 (ITA2), the most common teleprinter code in use until the advent of ASCII ...
may include a figure space. It is character 23 on the
Hughes telegraph
David Edward Hughes (16 May 1830 – 22 January 1900), was a British-American inventor, practical experimenter, and professor of music known for his work on the printing telegraph and the microphone. He is generally considered to have be ...
typewheel.
See also
*
Digit grouping
*
Em (typography)
*
En (typography)
An en (from English '' en quadrat'') is a typographic unit, half of the width of an em. By definition, it is equivalent to half of the body height of the typeface (e.g., in 16- point type it is 8 points). As its name suggests, it is also tradi ...
*
Non-breaking space
In word processing and digital typesetting, a non-breaking space, , also called NBSP, required space, hard space, or fixed space (though it is not of fixed width), is a space character that prevents an automatic line break at its position. I ...
*
Space (punctuation)
In writing, a space () is a blank area that separates words, sentences, syllables (in syllabification) and other written or printed glyphs (characters). Conventions for spacing vary among languages, and in some languages the spacing rules are ...
*
Thin space
In typography, a thin space is a space character whose width is usually or of an em. It is used to add a narrow space, such as between nested quotation marks or to separate glyphs that interfere with one another. It is not as narrow as the hai ...
*
Whitespace character
In computer programming, whitespace is any character or series of characters that represent horizontal or vertical space in typography. When rendered, a whitespace character does not correspond to a visible mark, but typically does occupy an area ...
*
Word joiner
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Figure space (Typography)
Control characters
Typography
Unicode special code points
Unicode formatting code points
Whitespace