# What became of the "hard space"  

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-became-of-the-hard-space-nbsp/274716>\
**Category:** About This Message Board\
**Created:** [November 14, 2004, 4:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-became-of-the-hard-space-nbsp/274716 "2004-11-14T16:08:25Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 8\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![According\_to\_Pliny](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/8e7dd6/32.png) [@According\_to\_Pliny](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/According_to_Pliny)\
**Post date:** [November 14, 2004, 4:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-became-of-the-hard-space-nbsp/274716/1 "2004-11-14T16:08:25Z")

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I’m sure that I’ve been able to use &nbsp; here before.

And yet in this thread [Greeting card writing](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=286556) they didn’t work.

How else are you supposed to get a leading space on a line for a simple indent?

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**Author:** ![According\_to\_Pliny](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/8e7dd6/32.png) [@According\_to\_Pliny](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/According_to_Pliny)\
**Post date:** [November 14, 2004, 4:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-became-of-the-hard-space-nbsp/274716/2 "2004-11-14T16:10:37Z")

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Is there an equivalent vB code?

Any idea why blanks are stripped in the first place? They are such useful characters.

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**Author:** ![JeffB](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jeffb/32/188_2.png) [@JeffB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JeffB)\
**Post date:** [November 14, 2004, 4:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-became-of-the-hard-space-nbsp/274716/3 "2004-11-14T16:29:57Z")

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One way is:

using the [INDENT] [/INDENT] tag

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**Author:** ![Q.E.D](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/51bf81/32.png) [@Q.E.D](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Q.E.D)\
**Post date:** [November 14, 2004, 4:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-became-of-the-hard-space-nbsp/274716/4 "2004-11-14T16:31:02Z")

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> [@According to Pliny](#):
>
> Is there an equivalent vB code?
> 
> Any idea why blanks are stripped in the first place? They are such useful characters.

The spaces aren’t stripped by vB They are stripped by your browser. Use View Source to look at this post.

As for &nbsp; I have no idea. I assume the current version of vB parses it out.

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**Author:** ![AHunter3](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ahunter3/32/368_2.png) [@AHunter3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AHunter3)\
**Post date:** [November 14, 2004, 6:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-became-of-the-hard-space-nbsp/274716/5 "2004-11-14T18:31:13Z")

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Testing  
AlsoTesting  
|Testing with bar first  
|AlsoTesting with bar first  
First and third lines = option-space on Mac  
Second and fourth lines - shift-option-space on Mac

::previews post::

Yep, strips them out.

```auto

      <—normal spaces
<—option-spaces
<—shift-option-spaces

```

The code tag prevents them from being stripped. To me that indicates it isn’t the browser that’s doing it ('cuz it would know not from vB code tags, right?), but is instead vB itself.

::previews again::

Interesting. It still strips out the nonbreaking spaces but the normal spaces stay in.

::examines post::

More interesting: my actual post here in the “Reply to Thread” box has been modified by the process of previewing. The spaces have been stripped from what I actuallly typed, so I had to add them back in before submitting (not that it’s going to make any difference, I guess).

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**Author:** ![yabob](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/yabob/32/2821_2.png) [@yabob](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/yabob)\
**Post date:** [November 14, 2004, 6:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-became-of-the-hard-space-nbsp/274716/6 "2004-11-14T18:38:41Z")

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The VB code tag generates a \<pre\> tag surrounding your text, which tells the browser to preserve spaces, as well as to use a constant width font. As noted, multiple spaces \<------- like this are preserved in your post, but browsers normally compress white space (I left about thirty spaces there - look at the source in your browser - you will see they are still present.

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**Author:** ![rowrrbazzle](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rowrrbazzle/32/414_2.png) [@rowrrbazzle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rowrrbazzle)\
**Post date:** [November 15, 2004, 12:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-became-of-the-hard-space-nbsp/274716/7 "2004-11-15T00:08:07Z")

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All of the HTML symbolics stopped working with the current installation of vB. That capability may have been an add-on that was installed here.

The numerics still work, though.

Non-breaking space is &nbsp;

1  
&nbsp;&nbsp;2  
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;3  
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;4  
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;5

The additional problem we have now is that these things are now interpreted in the text entry area. To keep them, do the browser “back” function to make your corrections, or to make sure, save your post in Notepad or something.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![According\_to\_Pliny](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/8e7dd6/32.png) [@According\_to\_Pliny](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/According_to_Pliny)\
**Post date:** [November 15, 2004, 12:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-became-of-the-hard-space-nbsp/274716/8 "2004-11-15T00:39:28Z")

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That’s the ticket!

Yeah, there are a number of things that change on preview, like the addition of [url] code that may or may not trip you up when editing.

Sort of defeats the purpose of preview, but what are you gonna do.