InType: Using White Space Characters

The long and sometimes mysterious list of options located under Type > Insert White Space (Figure 1) is frequently overlooked and quite often misunderstood by designers.

Not only are the characters’ meanings and usages unfamiliar to many, but the path to their navigation can be trying, due to the zigzaggy nature of the path you have to take to get to them. Also, as you can see from the menu, some of them have keyboard shortcuts, others don’t. But they are important and useful elements that should be known to every designer wanting to finesse their typography for the most professional results. I personally admit negligence in the use of white space characters, usually opting for the kerning or tracking feature. But in researching this article, I’ve come to find out this is not the best, nor I daresay the most professional, way to add space. The use of white space characters is considered to be the more elegant, professional solution, and will avoid the creation of overrides when using styles, which can be problematic later in the production process.

Scott Citron, designer and Adobe Certified Expert, says, “Why are these spaces better than using kerning or tracking for the same result? The value of each is easily repeatable. If I’m constantly kerning a pair of quotes followed by a single quote, I have to either remember the kerning value or I have to copy/paste the characters each time. But the best reason is that I can copy a thin space into the Find/Change or GREP search field and tell

InDesign to look for all em dashes and replace them with an em dash that’s bracketed by thin spaces. You can’t do that with mere kerning!”

The Cast of Characters

The listing of white spaces shown in Figure 2 shows their relative widths in a visual way. Read on for more gnarly details.

The letter series

An em space is a blank space equal in width to that of an uppercase “M” of that font family. That width essentially defines, or you could say personifies, the accepted size of the entire face. So it follows that in 48-point type, an em space is 48 points wide, in 24-point type the em space is 24 point, and so on. This variable space (as opposed to a fixed space, which is the same for any sized type) can be accessed via Command+Shift+M or Ctrl+Shift+M. The en space white space character is half the width of an em space (defined above). For a 48-point font size, an en space will take up a width of 24 points, and so on. You can use an en space to create a bigger gap between certain words or special characters. Its keyboard shortcut is Command+Shift+N or Ctrl+Shift+N. 

The nonbreaking series

Although the following nonbreaking spaces appear in the middle of InDesign’s drop-down menu, it would make more sense (to me) if they were at the beginning or the end of the list, as they are not really white spaces, but commands to achieve an action. In any case, here are their definitions: Nonbreaking Space: This space is actually a command or instruction that keeps two words together, and prevents them from being broken or separated at the space character at the end of a line. It can be used in proper names such as company and product names, cities, states, or countries, or in numerical expressions that you want to keep together, such as New Zealand, 460 B.C., Bill Brown, Jr., p. 48, or 2500 USD. In the last two examples, you might not want “USD” following “2500” to drop to the next line, or you would want to keep together “p. 48,” so you would replace the word space between the entities with a nonbreaking space to keep them together. The shortcut for this is Command+Option+X or Ctrl+Alt+X. Nonbreaking Space (Fixed Width): A fixed width, nonbreaking space, as shown in Figure 3, prevents the line from being broken at the space character, as does the one explained above, but does not expand or compress in justified text. Use for non-justified text. 

The (mostly) numerate-sounding series

The hair, sixth, thin, quarter, and third spaces that follow can be used anywhere you need a small amount of space to separate characters, including: Adding space around “too tight” en and em dashes (Figure 4)

Spacing out manual ellipses (as opposed to the ellipsis glyph) Opening up characters that are too tight in some fonts, like an open quote before certain characters, especially in italic fonts Adding a bit more space between single quote marks inside of double quotes Tweaking the alignment of bulleted lists Manual indents Hair space: One twenty-fourth the width of an em space, so at 48 point, the hair space is 2 points (Figure 5). Sixth space: One-sixth the width of an em space. At 48 point, a sixth space is 8 points. Thin space: One-eighth the width of an em space, so at 48 point, a thin space is 6 points. The keyboard shortcut for a thin space is Shift+Option+Command+M or Shift+Alt+Ctrl+M. Quarter space: One-fourth the width of an em space. At 48 point, a quarter space is 12 points. Third space: One-third the width of an em space. At 48 point, a third space is 16 points.

Specialized spaces

These remaining spaces have specific widths and/or functions: Punctuation space: The same width as an exclamation point, period, comma, or colon in the typeface. Figure space: This white space character is, or should be, the same width as the tabular figures in any given font. (I say “should be” because in my exploration, I’ve found that it is not always the exact same width.) A figure space can be used to help align tabular numerals in tables and other vertical columns of numbers (Figure 6).

Flush space: Adds a variable amount of space to the last line of a fully justified paragraph—useful for justifying text in the last line. It is also used to flush out a series of items. (Note that a flush space does nothing in ragged, unjustified text.) It can be used between the last character and an end mark in justified text to improve overall spacing (Figure 7). You can also use a flush space to space out a linear list, such as skills or abilities, states or names at bottom of letterhead, and so forth (Figure 8). It has a flexible width, so it can stretch or squeeze as a line width changes. When using white space characters—or any time you want to know which and how many invisible characters are used in any given text—it is helpful to “see” them. Activating the Hidden Characters feature allows you to see the special non-printing characters in blue in your text boxes (Figure 9). You can do this by choosing Type > Show Hidden Characters from the bottom of the menu, or using the shortcut Command+Option+I or Ctrl+Alt+I. A few of these white space characters have automated shortcuts, as noted above, yet others do not. The solution is to create your own keyboard shortcuts: choose Edit > Keyboard Shortcuts > Product Area: Type Menu (Figure 10).

Space Exploration

So what is the takeaway? Take the time to research and experiment with InDesign’s white space characters. You might find these hidden gems to become some of your favorite, most productive, and practical typesetting shortcuts yet!