Joiners, selectors and fillers
ZERO WIDTH NON-JOINER (U+200C)
The opposite of the joiner: an invisible character that forbids two neighbours from being drawn as one connected form.
- Codepoint
U+200C- Category
- Joiners, selectors and fillers
- Removed by default
- When free-floating
- Governing option
- Aggressive
-a - Can be load-bearing
- Yes
Where it comes from
Persian above all, where it separates the parts of a compound word — "میروم" is spelled with one and means something different without it. Also German (to block an unwanted ligature), Hindi, and zero-width steganography, where it is the "0" to the joiner's "1".
Why it matters
In Persian it is orthography: removing it merges two words into one wrong word. In English prose it is invisible padding with no function at all. The same codepoint, two completely different verdicts — which is the whole argument for context-aware cleaning.
Before and after
Between two Latin letters a non-joiner has nothing to disconnect, so it is removed. Between two Persian letters it is the spelling.
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
Between two letters of the same joining script. Persian plural and continuous-tense forms depend on it, and so does correct Hindi conjunct behaviour.
How to remove it
Free-floating occurrences go in the default pass. Ones between two letters of a joining script are kept and reported; `-a` removes them too.
Is it an AI watermark?
Used to hide data — not a watermark
No. It is standard Persian orthography and a standard stego symbol. Which of the two you are looking at is decided by the neighbours, not by who wrote the sentence.
A known carrier for deliberately hidden payloads. Someone put it there on purpose, which is a different question from who wrote the words.
Questions
Is it safe to clean Persian text?
Yes, with the default settings: a non-joiner between two Arabic-script letters is kept and reported as load-bearing. Turning on `-a` would remove it and change the spelling.
What about German ligature suppression?
Between two Latin letters, Ghostchars removes it. If you are typesetting and need "Auflage" without the fl ligature, do that in the layout tool rather than in the text.
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.