Term: nbsp [nonbreaking space]

nbsp is something you should never see.

You should never see it, because it’s part of HTML – the programing and layout language that web pages and email can be written in. When rendered properly, it should appear as a space.

It is, more correctly,   (including the ampersand and semicolon), and stands for “non-breaking space”. It’s a space used between two words that indicates that they cannot be broken apart. For instance, a writer might not want to allow text like “World War II”, or “17 kg”, or “T.S. Eliot” to be separated by a line break.

This, and other HTML “character entities”, as they’re called, will appear if some or all of the HTML code isn’t being interpreted correctly when being displayed.