Wikipedia's 'Non-breaking Space' Density in Article Text
Tracking how often non-breaking spaces appear in Wikipedia article text.
- Observations
- 2
- Tracking since
- Last updated
Median Non-breaking Space Density
The median ratio of non-breaking space characters (' ') to total characters in the wikitext of Wikipedia articles.
| When | Median Non-breaking Space Density |
|---|---|
| 0.0% | |
| 0.0% |
About this data
This page examines the prevalence of non-breaking spaces (NBSP) within the text of Wikipedia articles. An NBSP is a character that prevents a line break from occurring between two words, often used to keep phrases like 'New York' together. We're measuring the median density of these spaces – essentially, the average proportion of characters in an article that are NBSPs.
These figures are derived from the publicly available text dumps of Wikipedia articles. By analysing these dumps, we can quantify how often authors choose to use NBSPs. This seemingly small detail can offer insights into how writers aim to control the visual presentation of their text, potentially highlighting efforts to improve readability, specific authoring styles, or even subtle differences in how articles are translated or adapted across languages.
Sources
Every figure on this page was read from these pages.
Why this isn't published anywhere else
While non-breaking spaces are discussed on Wikipedia and in technical documentation, there are no existing sources that specifically track or publish the density of non-breaking spaces within Wikipedia article text.
Uniqueness score 0.90 — assessed against live web search results when this subject was created.