Zero-width and invisible
ZERO WIDTH SPACE (U+200B)
A space with no width. It takes up a position in the string, marks a place where a line may break, and draws nothing at all.
- Codepoint
U+200B- Also written as
u200b\u200b​- Category
- Zero-width and invisible
- Removed by default
- Yes
- Governing option
- No option needed
- Can be load-bearing
- No
Copy and paste U+200B
To copy and paste ZERO WIDTH SPACE (U+200B), press the button: the character itself goes to your clipboard, and Ctrl+V (Cmd+V on a Mac) pastes it anywhere you can type.
Where it comes from
Content management systems and word processors insert it to let a long URL or an unbroken run of CJK wrap. It also arrives with copy-pasted web content, from templating engines that emit it between tags, and from tools that hide data on purpose. It is the most common carrier in zero-width steganography.
Why it matters
It is classed as a format character rather than as whitespace, so it survives copy-paste, splits a word for a spell checker, breaks exact-match search and `grep`, and gives a hidden channel one bit per position. "hello" and "hello" look identical and compare unequal.
Before and after
Two strings that render identically. Only the second one matches a search for "hello".
The character is shown as a labelled chip so you can see where it sits. In your text it draws nothing at all.
When it is legitimate
Only as a break hint in text that would otherwise overflow: a long URL, a CJK paragraph. Nothing in Latin prose needs one, and HTML has `<wbr>` for the same job.
How to remove it
The default pass removes it. There is no option to switch on and no context in which Ghostchars keeps it.
Working in a file rather than a paste? The document report for .docx, .odt and .html finds it inside the file, together with hidden runs and tracked changes, without you having to open it. If the question is what the rest of the writing does rather than what this one character does, measure sentence-length variation and see where each habit sits, with no score and no claim about who wrote the text.
Is it an AI watermark?
Used to hide data, but is not a watermark
No. U+200B is not a watermark and no major model is known to emit it as a signature. It is the classic carrier for hand-made hidden payloads, so its presence tells you the text passed through something (a CMS, an editor, a stego tool), not who or what wrote it.
A known carrier for deliberately hidden payloads. Someone put it there on purpose, which is a different question from who wrote the words.
Questions
Does a zero width space show up anywhere?
Not in normal rendering: it has no glyph and no advance width. It becomes visible only in a hex editor, in an editor with "show invisibles" turned on, or in a tool like this one.
Will removing it break my text?
No. Removing U+200B can only take away a line-break opportunity. It never changes a word, a space, or any character you can see.
Why does search fail on text that contains one?
Search compares codepoints. A zero width space between two letters makes the word a different string from the one you typed, so exact match, database queries and `grep` all miss it.
Check your own text
Paste anything into the cleaner to see every hidden character it contains, with position, codepoint and what happens to each one. Nothing is uploaded.
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