Invisible characters - ASCII

Solution 1:

I just went through the character map to get these. They are all in Calibri.

Number    Name                   HTML Code    Appearance
------    --------------------   ---------    ----------
U+2000    En Quad                       " "
U+2001    Em Quad                       " "
U+2002    En Space                      " "
U+2003    Em Space                      " "
U+2004    Three-Per-Em Space            " "
U+2005    Four-Per-Em Space             " "
U+2006    Six-Per-Em Space              " "
U+2007    Figure Space                  " "
U+2008    Punctuation Space             " "
U+2009    Thin Space                    " "
U+200A    Hair Space                    " "
U+200B    Zero-Width Space       ​      "​"
U+200C    Zero Width Non-Joiner  ‌      "‌"
U+200D    Zero Width Joiner      ‍      "‍"
U+200E    Left-To-Right Mark     ‎      "‎"
U+200F    Right-To-Left Mark     ‏      "‏"
U+202F    Narrow No-Break Space         " "

Solution 2:

How a character is represented is up to the renderer, but the server may also strip out certain characters before sending the document.

You can also have untitled YouTube videos like https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dmBvw8uPbrA by using the Unicode character ZERO WIDTH NON-JOINER (U+200C), or ‌ in HTML. The code block below should contain that character:

‌‌ 

Solution 3:

There is actually a truly invisible character: U+FEFF. This character is called the Byte Order Mark and is related to the Unicode 8 system. It is a really confusing concept that can be explained HERE The Byte Order Mark or BOM for short is an invisible character that doesn't take up any space. You can copy the character bellow between the > and <.

Here is the character:

> <

How to catch this character in action:

• Copy the character between the > and <,
• Write a line of text, then randomly put your caret in the line of text
• Paste the character in the line.
• Go to the beginning of the line and press and hold the right arrow key.

You will notice that when your caret gets to the place you pasted the character, it will briefly stop for around half a second. This is becuase the caret is passing over the invisible character. Even though you can't see it doesn't mean it isn't there. The caret still sees that there is a character in that area that you pasted the BOM and will pass through it. Since the BOM is invisble, the caret will look like it has paused for a brief moment. You can past the BOM multiple times in an area and redo the steps above to really show the affect. Good luck!

EDIT: Sadly, Stackoverflow doesn't like the character. Here is an example from w3.org: https://www.w3.org/International/questions/examples/phpbomtest.php

Solution 4:

Other answers are correct - whether a character is invisible or not depends on what font you use. This seems to be a pretty good list to me of characters that are truly invisible (not even space). It contains some chars that the other lists are missing.

'\u2060', // Word Joiner
'\u2061', // FUNCTION APPLICATION
'\u2062', // INVISIBLE TIMES
'\u2063', // INVISIBLE SEPARATOR
'\u2064', // INVISIBLE PLUS
'\u2066', // LEFT - TO - RIGHT ISOLATE
'\u2067', // RIGHT - TO - LEFT ISOLATE
'\u2068', // FIRST STRONG ISOLATE
'\u2069', // POP DIRECTIONAL ISOLATE
'\u206A', // INHIBIT SYMMETRIC SWAPPING
'\u206B', // ACTIVATE SYMMETRIC SWAPPING
'\u206C', // INHIBIT ARABIC FORM SHAPING
'\u206D', // ACTIVATE ARABIC FORM SHAPING
'\u206E', // NATIONAL DIGIT SHAPES
'\u206F', // NOMINAL DIGIT SHAPES
'\u200B', // Zero-Width Space
'\u200C', // Zero Width Non-Joiner
'\u200D', // Zero Width Joiner
'\u200E', // Left-To-Right Mark
'\u200F', // Right-To-Left Mark
'\u061C', // Arabic Letter Mark
'\uFEFF', // Byte Order Mark
'\u180E', // Mongolian Vowel Separator
'\u00AD'  // soft-hyphen