Inspection report—
Cleaned text
Ticked items are cleaned. This changes how the text is stored, not who wrote it.
Remove zero-width spaces from text
Paste your text and every zero-width space lights up. Untick anything you want to keep, then copy the clean version.
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How it works
Short answer
A zero-width space (U+200B) is an invisible character that takes up no room on screen. To remove it, paste your text into the box above. The checker highlights every one, and the cleaned text below has them all removed and ready to copy.
Text: characters that take up no space
A zero-width space sits between letters but draws nothing. It can break search, word counts and code, and can be used to mark copied text. Tag characters go further and spell out invisible messages.
What counts as a zero-width character
There are a handful of characters that take up no space at all. The checker finds all of them and labels each one so you know what it was:
| Character | Code | What it's for |
|---|---|---|
| Zero-width space (ZWSP) | U+200B | Marks an optional line break |
| Zero-width non-joiner (ZWNJ) | U+200C | Stops two letters joining |
| Zero-width joiner (ZWJ) | U+200D | Joins characters, as in combined emoji |
| Word joiner (WJ) | U+2060 | Stops a line break |
| Byte order mark (BOM) | U+FEFF | A file-format marker that shouldn't be inside text |
| Soft hyphen (SHY) | U+00AD | A hyphen that only shows at a line break |
Joiners inside emoji (like a family emoji) and inside scripts that need them, such as Persian or Hindi, are left alone.
Where they come from
Most zero-width spaces are accidents. Web pages use them to let long words wrap, PDF exports scatter them between letters, and some chat and AI interfaces insert them into formatted output. When you copy the text, they come along.
Occasionally they're deliberate. Some services insert patterns of invisible characters to trace who copied a piece of text. Cleaning removes those too.
Removing them by hand
- Word: Find and Replace, search for
^u8203, replace with nothing. - VS Code: turn on Render Control Characters, or search with the regex
. - Excel or Google Sheets:
=SUBSTITUTE(A1, UNICHAR(8203), "").
Each of these handles one character type at a time. Pasting here catches all of them at once.
Questions
What is a zero-width space?
It is the Unicode character U+200B. It marks a spot where a line may break, but it has no width, so you can't see it. It often arrives with text copied from websites, PDFs, chat apps and AI tools.
Why is a zero-width space a problem?
Software treats it as a real character. A search for “invoice” won't match “invoice”, a password with one inside won't work, word counts go wrong and code can fail with confusing errors.
How do I find zero-width spaces in Word or Google Docs?
Neither shows them clearly. In Word you can search for ^u8203 with Find and Replace. The quicker way is to paste the text here, clean it, and paste it back.
Will removing them change how my text looks?
No. They are invisible, so the clean text looks exactly the same. It just behaves properly in search, forms and code.