In computing and typesetting, a soft hyphen (Unicode U+00AD SOFT HYPHEN (­)) or syllable hyphen, is a code point reserved in some coded character sets for the purpose of breaking words across lines by inserting visible hyphens if they fall on the line end but remain invisible within the line.
Two alternative ways of using the soft hyphen character for this purpose have emerged, depending on whether the encoded text will be broken into lines by its recipient, or has already been preformatted by its originator.[1][2][3]
- ^ Jukka Korpela (January 2011). "Soft hyphen (SHY) – a hard problem?". Tampere University of Technology. Retrieved 8 April 2011.
- ^ Markus G. Kuhn (4 June 2003). "Unicode interpretation of SOFT HYPHEN breaks ISO 8859-1 compatibility" (PDF). Unicode Technical Committee. L2/03-155R.
- ^ Eric Muller (14 August 2002). "Yes, SOFT HYPHEN is a hard problem". Unicode Technical Committee. L2/02-279.