Word joiner

The word joiner (WJ) (⁠) is a Unicode format character which is used to indicate that line breaking should not occur at its position.^[1] It does not affect the formation of ligatures or cursive joining and is ignored for the purpose of text segmentation.^[1] It is encoded since Unicode version 3.2 (released in 2002) as U+2060WORD JOINER (⁠).

The word joiner replaces the zero-width no-break space (ZWNBSP, U+FEFF), as a usage of the no-break space of zero width. The ZWNBSP is originally and currently used as the byte order mark (BOM) at the start of a file. However, if encountered elsewhere, it should, according to Unicode, be treated as a word joiner, a no-break space of zero width.

The deliberate use of U+FEFF for this purpose is deprecated as of Unicode 3.2, with the word joiner strongly preferred.^{[1] [2]}

As the word joiner is an invisible character, it is convenient to have a visible symbol for it on keyboards and in keyboard documentation. The standard ISO/IEC 9995-7 gives symbol 83 for the word joiner, which is identical to IEC 60417 symbol 6077-3.^[3]

• Byte order mark, which uses U+FEFFZERO WIDTH NO-BREAK SPACE (ZWNBSP) character
• Zero-width space
• Zero-width joiner, which in scripts such as Arabic or Indic causes two characters to be shown in a connected form, even if they would otherwise not.