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Katherine Johnson’s mathematical calculations helped guide some of America’s most important early space missions while she confronted the racial and gender barriers faced by Black women in twentieth-century America.
MORE →Reflects the personal views, recollections, and perspective of the author, Mike Davis.
This is a personal recollection on the Move fire on May 13, 1985
The zero-width non-joiner (ZWNJ, rendered: ; HTML entity: ‌ or ‌) is a non-printing character used in the computerization of writing systems that make use of ligatures. For example, in writing systems that feature initial, medial and final letter-forms, such as the Persian alphabet, when a ZWNJ is placed between two characters that would otherwise be joined into a ligature, it instead prevents the ligature and causes them to be printed in their final and initial forms, respectively. This is also an effect of a space character, but a ZWNJ is used when it is desirable to keep the characters closer together or to abut two morphemes that are part of a single word.
The ZWNJ is encoded in Unicode as U+200C ZERO WIDTH NON-JOINER (‌).
In certain languages, the ZWNJ is necessary for unambiguously specifying the correct typographic form of a character sequence.
| Correct (with ZWNJ) | Incorrect | Meaning | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Display | Picture | Code | Display | Picture | Code | |
| میخواهم | 
|
می‌خواهم(rendered from right to left): می‌خواهم |
میخواهم | 
|
میخواهم
|
Persian 'I want to' |
| ساءينس | 
|
ساءين‌س(rendered from right to left): ساءين‌س |
ساءينس | 
|
ساءينس
|
Malay 'science' |
| ۂسؠتِنؠ | ۂسؠ‌تِنؠ(rendered from right to left): ۂسؠ‌تِنؠ |
ۂسؠتِنؠ | ۂسؠتِنؠ
|
Kashmiri 'A female elephant' | ||
| הֱֽיֹות | 
|
הֱ‌ֽיֹות(rendered from right to left): הֱ‌ֽיֹות |
הֱֽיֹות | 
|
הֱֽיֹות
|
Old Hebrew 'be' |
| Auflage | 
|
Auf‌lage
|
Auflage | 
|
Auflage
|
German 'edition' (compound of "auf"+"Lage") |
| Brotzeit | 
|
Brot‌zeit
|
Brotzeit | 
|
Brotzeit
|
German (regional) '(kind of) snack' (compound noun "Brot"+"Zeit" = 'bread time'), shown in Fraktur |
| deafly | 
|
deaf‌ly
|
deafly | 
|
deafly
|
Not a compound of "dea"+"fly", but the adverb of "deaf" |
| श्रीमान्को | श्रीमान्‌को
|
श्रीमान्को | श्रीमान्को
|
In Nepali "of husband" or "of respected person" according as what "श्रीमान्" is used to represent (husband or respected person) | ||
| উদ্যাপন | 
|
উদ্‌যাপন
|
উদ্যাপন | 
|
উদ্যাপন
|
Bengali 'celebration' |
| अय्लाः | अय्‌लाः
|
अय्लाः | अय्लाः
|
Aila, a traditional alcoholic beverage, in Nepal Bhasa | ||
| హైద్రాబాదు | 
|
హైద్‌రాబాదు
|
హైద్రాబాదు | హైద్రాబాదు
|
Hyderabad in Telugu | |
The picture shows how the code looks when it is rendered correctly, and in every row the correct and incorrect pictures should be different. On a system which is not configured to display the Unicode correctly, the correct display and the incorrect one may look the same, or either of them may be significantly different from the corresponding picture.
In this Biblical Hebrew example, the placement of the meteg to the left of the segol is correct, which has a shva sign written as two vertical dots to denote short vowel. If a meteg were placed to the left of shva, it would be erroneous. In Modern Hebrew, there is no reason to use the meteg for spoken language, so it is rarely used in Modern Hebrew typesetting.
In German typography, ligatures may not cross the constituent boundaries within compounds. Thus, in the first German example, the prefix Auf- is separated from the rest of the word to prohibit the ligature fl. Similarly, in English, some argue ligatures should not cross morpheme boundaries.[2][better source needed] For example, in some words fly and fish are morphemes but in others they're not; therefore, by their reasoning, words like deafly and selfish (here shown with the non-joiner) should not have ligatures (respectively of fl and fi) while dayfly and catfish should have them.
Persian uses this character extensively for certain prefixes, suffixes and compound words.[3] It is necessary for disambiguating compounds from non-compound words, which use a full space.
In the Jawi script of Malay, ZWNJ is used whenever more than one consonants are written at the end of any phrase (ساءينس, Malay for 'science' or sains in Latin script, pronounced /ˈsa.ɪns/.) It is used to signify that there are no vowels (specifically 'a' or 'ə') in between the two consonant letters as ساءينس would otherwise be pronounced either /ˈsa.ɪnas/ or /ˈsa.ɪnəs/. A space would separate the phrase into different words, where phrases such as ساءين س would now mean 'to sign the Arabic letter sin' (sain sin in Latin script.)
In Kashmiri written in the official modified Perso-Arabic script, the behavior of ؠ (Kashmiri Yeh) requires specific orthographic handling in digital text to maintain both visual and phonetic accuracy. This character indicates palatalization and possesses two principal typographic forms: the Gol Ye (with a diacritic ring) and the Taler Ye (a truncated form without the ring). Standard rendering protocols typically display the Taler form in word-final and isolated positions. However, these two forms are phonetically distinct and are often treated in pedagogical contexts as separate characters. The Taler Ye represents the palatalization of the preceding consonant [◌ʲ], whereas the Gol Ye in the medial position represents the palatalized vowel sound [ʲa]. In certain lexical contexts, such as شُپؠیَن (Shopian), a medial Taler form is linguistically mandatory to preserve the correct pronunciation and spelling. Because standard digital shaping engines often default to the joined Gol form in initial and medial positions, the Zero Width Non-Joiner (ZWNJ) must be used to suppress this joining behavior. This ensures the character retains its correct Taler shape within a single word unit, fulfilling the precise orthographic conventions of the script.[4]
In Indic scripts, insertion of a ZWNJ after a consonant either with a halant or before a dependent vowel prevents the characters from being joined properly:[5]
In Devanagari, the characters क् and ष typically combine to form क्ष, but when a ZWNJ is inserted between them, क्ष (code: क्‌ष) is seen instead. Similarly, when using ZWNJ, द्म is seen as द्म (code: द्‌म), etc.
In Kannada, the characters ನ್ and ನ combine to form ನ್ನ, but when a ZWNJ is inserted between them, ನ್ನ is displayed. That style is typically used to write foreign words in Kannada script: "Facebook" is written as ಫೇಸ್ಬುಕ್, though it can be written as ಫೇಸ್ಬುಕ್. ರಾಜ್ಕುಮಾರ್ and ರಾಮ್ಗೊಪಾಲ್ are examples of other proper nouns that need ZWNJ.
To insert a ZWNJ in Kannada, use Shift-V on Linux (iBus, InScript). On Windows (InScript), you can produce a ZWNJ with Ctrl+Shift+2 or Alt+0157. For the LipikaIME on Mac, the caret returns a ZWNJ.
In Bengali, when the Bengali letter য occurs at the end of a consonant cluster—i.e., য preceded by a ◌্ (hôsôntô)—it appears in a special shape, 
, known as the য-ফলা (ja-phalā), such as in ক্য (ক ্ য). Thus, when we want to write উদ্যাপন (correct Bengali spelling for celebration), it becomes উদ্যাপন (which is incorrect). Here ZWNJ works. If we want to write উদ্যাপন, we have to write in the following sequence (code: উদ্‌যাপন),[6][7] then we will get the proper rendering and the correct spelling. In Bengali, the hôsôntô is used for making any conjuncts and phalās (such as ra-phalā, ba-phalā etc). Where the hôsôntô needs to be displayed explicitly, it is required to insert ZWNJ after the hôsôntô.
Also in Bengali, when the Bengali letter র occurs at the beginning of a consonant cluster—i.e., র succeeded by a hôsôntô—it appears in a special shape, known as the রেফ (reph). Thus, the sequence র ্ য is rendered by default as র্য. When the য-ফলা shape needs to be retained rather than the রেফ shape, the ZWNJ U+200D ZERO WIDTH JOINER (‍) is inserted right after র, i.e., র‌্য to render র্য.[6][7] র্য is commonly used for loanwords from English such as র্যাম (RAM), র্যান্ডম (random) etc.
The symbol to be used on keyboards which enable the input of the ZWNJ directly is standardized in Amendment 1 (2012) of ISO/IEC 9995-7:2009 "Information technology – Keyboard layouts for text and office systems – Symbols used to represent functions" as symbol number 81, and in IEC 60417 "Graphical Symbols for use on Equipment" as symbol no. IEC 60417-6177-2.
In Microsoft Word's special-character insertion function, the zero-width non-joiner is called a "No-Width Optional Break".
Source: Wikipedia. Article content is retrieved live through the MediaWiki API.
In SGML, HTML and XML documents, the logical constructs known as character data and attribute values consist of sequences of characters, in which each character can manifest directly (representing itself), or can be represented by a series of characters called a character reference, of which there are two types: a numeric character reference and a character entity reference. This article lists the character entity references that are valid in HTML and XML documents.
The zero-width non-joiner (ZWNJ, rendered: ; HTML entity: or ) is a non-printing character used in the computerization of writing systems that make use of ligatures. For example, in writing systems that feature initial, medial and final letter-forms, such as the Persian alphabet, when a ZWNJ is placed between two characters that would otherwise be joined into a ligature, it instead prevents the ligature and causes them to be printed in their final and initial forms, respectively. This is also an effect of a space character, but a ZWNJ is used when it is desirable to keep the characters closer together or to abut two morphemes that are part of a single word. The ZWNJ is encoded in Unicode as U+200C ZERO WIDTH NON-JOINER ().
The zero-width joiner (ZWJ, ; rendered: ; HTML entity: or ) is a non-printing character used in the computerized typesetting of writing systems in which the shape or positioning of a grapheme depends on its relation to other graphemes (complex scripts), such as the Arabic script or any Indic script. Sometimes the Roman script is to be counted as complex, e.g. when using a Fraktur typeface. When placed between two characters that would otherwise not be connected, a ZWJ causes them to be printed in their connected forms. The exact behaviour of the ZWJ varies depending on whether the use of a conjunct consonant or ligature (where multiple characters are shown with a single glyph) is expected by default; for instance, it suppresses the use of conjuncts in Devanagari (whilst still allowing the use of the individual joining form of a dead consonant, as opposed to a halant form as would be required by the zero-width non-joiner), but induces the use of conjuncts in Sinhala (which does not use them by default). Similarly to Sinhala, when a ZWJ is placed between two emoji characters (or interspersed between multiple), it can result in a single glyph being shown, such as the family emoji, made up of two adult emoji and one or two child emoji. In some cases, such as the second Devanagari example below, the ZWJ can be used to display a joining form in isolation, when included after the character and combining halant code. The character's code point is U+200D ZERO WIDTH JOINER (). In the InScript keyboard layout for Indian languages, it is typed by the key combination Ctrl+⇧ Shift+1. However, many layouts use the position of QWERTY's ']' key for this character.
The zero-width space (rendered: ; HTML entity: or ), abbreviated ZWSP, is a non-printing character used in computerized typesetting to indicate where the word boundaries are, without actually displaying a visible space in the rendered text. This enables text-processing systems for scripts that do not use explicit spacing to recognize where word boundaries are for the purpose of handling line breaks appropriately. The zero-width space is Unicode character U+200B, and is located in the Unicode General Punctuation block. In HTML, it can be represented by the character entity reference .
Before the 1921 destruction of Tulsa’s Greenwood District, Black residents had created a remarkable center of business and community life. The district included stores, professional offices, entertainment venues and homes owned by Black citizens. Understanding Greenwood means learning what was built—not only what was burned.
MORE →Shirley Chisholm, elected in 1968.
