A figure space or numeric space is a
typographic unit equal to the size of a single
numerical digit
A numerical digit (often shortened to just digit) or numeral is a single symbol used alone (such as "1"), or in combinations (such as "15"), to represent numbers in positional notation, such as the common base 10. The name "digit" origin ...
. Its size can fluctuate somewhat depending on which
font
In metal typesetting, a font is a particular size, weight and style of a ''typeface'', defined as the set of fonts that share an overall design.
For instance, the typeface Bauer Bodoni (shown in the figure) includes fonts " Roman" (or "regul ...
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 or ''The Unicode Standard'' or TUS is a character encoding standard maintained by the Unicode Consortium designed to support the use of text in all of the world's writing systems that can be digitized. Version 16.0 defines 154,998 Char ...
it is assigned . Its HTML
character entity reference 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 before ASCII. Each ch ...
may include a figure space. It is character 23 on the
Hughes telegraph typewheel.
See also
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Digit grouping
FIle:Decimal separators.svg, alt=Four types of separating decimals: a) 1,234.56. b) 1.234,56. c) 1'234,56. d) ١٬٢٣٤٫٥٦., Both a comma and a full stop (or period) are generally accepted decimal separators for international use. The apost ...
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Em (typography)
An em (from ''Quad (typography), em quadrat'') is a Typographic unit, unit in the field of typography, equal to the currently specified Point (typography), point size. It corresponds to the Body height (typography), body height of the typeface. F ...
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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). The en is sometimes referred to as th ...
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Non-breaking space
In word processing and digital typesetting, a non-breaking space (), also called NBSP, required space, hard space, or fixed space ...
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Space (punctuation)
In writing, a space () is a blank area that word divider, separates words, Sentence spacing, sentences, and other written or printed glyphs (characters). Conventions for spacing vary among languages, and in some languages the spacing rules are co ...
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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 ...
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Whitespace character
A whitespace character is a character data element that represents white space when text is
rendered for display by a computer.
For example, a ''space'' character (, ASCII 32) represents blank space such as a word divider in a Western scrip ...
*
Word joiner
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Figure space (Typography)
Control characters
Typography
Unicode special code points
Unicode formatting code points
Whitespace