Bidirectional marks
RIGHT-TO-LEFT MARK (U+200F)
The mirror of U+200E: an invisible character with strong right-to-left direction, used to resolve ambiguity in mixed-direction text.
- Codepoint
U+200F- Also written as
u200f\u200f‏- Category
- Bidirectional marks
- Removed by default
- When free-floating
- Governing option
- Bidi marks
--bidi - Can be load-bearing
- Yes
Copy and paste U+200F
To copy and paste RIGHT-TO-LEFT MARK (U+200F), 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
Hebrew and Arabic documents, localisation pipelines that wrap variables defensively, and the same LRM/RLM steganography scheme.
Why it matters
It is invisible and it changes layout, so a stray one in a left-to-right paragraph can nudge punctuation to the wrong side of a line for no visible reason. In an English paragraph it is pure padding.
Before and after
In an English sentence the mark only moves the full stop around; there is no right-to-left text for it to help.
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
Next to right-to-left text, most often after a variable or a number embedded in an Arabic or Hebrew sentence, to stop the punctuation drifting.
How to remove it
Removed by the default pass when no neighbour is right-to-left; kept and reported when one is. `--bidi` removes it in both cases.
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, count the tell words and phrases per thousand words 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. Half of a two-symbol invisible alphabet, and also a legitimate bidi hint. Neither reading involves a language model.
A known carrier for deliberately hidden payloads. Someone put it there on purpose, which is a different question from who wrote the words.
Questions
Why does my full stop jump to the wrong side?
Punctuation takes its direction from the surrounding text. A stray right-to-left mark changes that context, which is exactly the bug these marks are meant to fix, and to cause.
Is Arabic text safe?
Yes with the defaults: a mark adjacent to Arabic is kept. Only `--bidi` removes 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.
Check your own textClean it in Chrome as you pasteClean it on your Mac with one keystrokeAll characters