Unicode Standard Annex #14

Unicode Line Breaking Algorithm

Summary

This annex presents the Unicode line breaking algorithm along with detailed descriptions of each of the character classes established by the Unicode line breaking property. The line breaking algorithm produces a set of "break opportunities", or positions that would be suitable for wrapping lines when preparing text for display. A model implementation using pair tables is also provided.

Contents

• 1  Overview and Scope
• 2  Definitions
• 3  Introduction
  • 3.1  Determining Line Break Opportunities
• 4  Conformance
  • 4.1  Conformance Requirements
• 5  Line Breaking Properties
  • 5.1  Description of Line Breaking Properties
  • 5.2  Dictionary Usage
  • 5.3  Use of Hyphen
  • 5.4  Use of Soft Hyphen
  • 5.5  Use of Double Hyphen
  • 5.6  Tibetan Line Breaking
  • 5.7  Word Separator Characters
• 6  Line Breaking Algorithm
  • 6.1  Non-tailorable Line Breaking Rules
  • 6.2  Tailorable Line Breaking Rules
• 7  Pair Table-Based Implementation
  • 7.1  Minimal Table
  • 7.2  Extended Context
  • 7.3  Example Pair Table
  • 7.4  Sample Code
  • 7.5  Combining Marks
  • 7.6  Conjoining Jamos
• 8  Customization
  • 8.1  Types of Tailoring
  • 8.2  Examples of Customization
• 9  Implementation Notes
  • 9.1  Combining Marks in Regular Expression-Based Implementations
  • 9.2  Legacy Support for Space Character as Base for Combining Marks
• 10  Testing

• References
• Acknowledgments
• Modifications

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1 Overview and Scope

The text of The Unicode Standard [Unicode] presents a limited description of some of the characters with specific functions in line breaking, but does not give a complete specification of line breaking behavior. This annex provides more detailed information about default line breaking behavior reflecting best practices for the support of multilingual texts.

For most Unicode characters, considerable variation in line breaking behavior can be expected, including variation based on local or stylistic preferences. For that reason, the line breaking properties provided for these characters are informative. Some characters are intended to explicitly influence line breaking. Their line breaking behavior is therefore expected to be identical across all implementations. As described in this annex, the Unicode Standard assigns normative line breaking properties to those characters. The Unicode Line Breaking Algorithm is a tailorable set of rules that uses these line breaking properties in context to determine line break opportunities.

This annex opens with formal definitions, a summary of the line breaking task and the context in which it occurs in overall text layout followed by a brief section on conformance requirements. Three main sections follow:

• Section 5, Line Breaking Properties, contains a narrative description of the line breaking behavior of the characters of the Unicode Standard, grouping them in alphabetical order by line breaking class.
• Section 6, Line Breaking Algorithm, provides a set of rules listed in order of precedence that constitute a line breaking algorithm.
• Section 7, Pair Table-Based Implementation, describes an efficient pair table-based implementation of the algorithm.

The final two sections discuss issues of customization and implementation.

• Section 8, Customization, provides a discussion of how to tailor the algorithm.
• Section 9, Implementation Notes, provides additional information to implementers using regular expression-based techniques or requiring legacy support for combining marks.

2 Definitions

All terms not defined here shall be as defined in the Unicode Standard [Unicode5.0]. The notation defined in this annex differs somewhat from the notation defined elsewhere in the Unicode Standard. All other notation used here without an explicit definition shall be as defined elsewhere in the Unicode Standard.

LD1   Line Fitting:  The process of determining how much text will fit on a line of text, given the available space between the margins and the actual display width of the text.

LD2  Line Break:  The position in the text where one line ends and the next one starts.

LD3  Line Break Opportunity:  A place where a line is allowed to end.

• Whether a given position in the text is a valid line break opportunity depends on the context as well as the line breaking rules in force.

LD4  Line Breaking:  The process of selecting one among several line break opportunities such that the resulting line is optimal or ends at a user-requested explicit line break.

LD5  Line Breaking Property: A character property with enumerated values, as listed in Table 1, and separated into normative and informative values.

• Line breaking property values are used to classify characters and, taken in context, determine the type of line break opportunity.

LD6  Line Breaking Class: A class of characters with the same line breaking property value.

The Line Breaking Classes are described in Section 5.1, Description of Line Breaking Properties.

LD7  Mandatory Break: A line must break following a character that has the mandatory break property.

Such a break is also known as a forced break and is indicated in the rules as B !, where B is the character with the mandatory break property.

LD8  Direct Break:  A line break opportunity exists between two adjacent characters of the given line breaking classes.

A direct break is indicated in the rules below as B ÷ A, where B is the character class of the character before and A is the character class of the character after the break. If they are separated by one or more space characters, a break opportunity exists instead after the last space. In the pair table, the optional space characters are not shown.

LD9  Indirect Break:  A line break opportunity exists between two characters of the given line breaking classes only if they are separated by one or more spaces.

• For an indirect break, a break opportunity exists after the last space. No break opportunity exists if the characters are immediately adjacent.

An indirect break is indicated in the pair table in Table 2 as B % A, where B is the character class of the character before and A is the character class of the character after the break. Even though space characters are not shown in the pair table, an indirect break can occur only if one or more spaces follow B. In the notation of the rules in Section 6, Line Breaking Algorithm, this would be represented as two rules: B × A and B SP+ ÷ A where the “+” sign means one or more occurrences.

LD10  Prohibited Break: No line break opportunity exists between two characters of the given line breaking classes, even if they are separated by one or more space characters.

A prohibited break is indicated in the pair table in Table 2 as B ^ A, where B is the character class of the character before and A is the character class of the character after the break, and the optional space characters are not shown. In the notation of the rules in Section 6, Line Breaking Algorithm, this would be expressed as a rule of the form: B SP* × A.

LD11  Hyphenation: Hyphenation uses language-specific rules to provide additional line break opportunities within a word.

• Hyphenation improves the layout of narrow columns, especially for languages with many longer words, such as German or Finnish. For the purpose of this annex, it is assumed that hyphenation is equivalent to inserting soft hyphen characters. All other aspects of hyphenation are outside the scope of this annex.

Table 1 lists all of line breaking classes by name, also giving their class abbreviation and their status as tailorable or not. The examples and brief indication of line breaking behavior in this table are merely typical, not exhaustive. Section 5.1, Description of Line Breaking Properties, provides a detailed description of each line breaking class, including detailed overview of the line breaking behavior for characters of that class.

Table 1. Line Breaking Classes (* = non-tailorable)

Class	Descriptive Name	Examples	Characters with This Property...
Non-tailorable Line Breaking Classes
BK *	Mandatory Break	NL, PS	Cause a line break (after)
CR *	Carriage Return	CR	Cause a line break (after), except between CR and LF
LF *	Line Feed	LF	Cause a line break (after)
CM *	Attached Characters and Combining Marks	Combining marks, control codes	Prohibit a line break between the character and the preceding character
NL *	Next Line	NEL	Cause a line break (after)
SG *	Surrogates	Surrogates	Do not occur in well-formed text
WJ *	Word Joiner	WJ	Prohibit line breaks before and after
ZW *	Zero Width Space	ZWSP	Provide a break opportunity
GL *	Non-breaking (“Glue”)	CGJ, NBSP, ZWNBSP	Prohibit line breaks before and after
SP *	Space	SPACE	Enable indirect line breaks
Break Opportunities
B2	Break Opportunity Before and After	Em dash	Provide a line break opportunity before and after the character
BA	Break Opportunity After	Spaces, hyphens	Generally provide a line break opportunity after the character
BB	Break Opportunity Before	Punctuation used in dictionaries	Generally provide a line break opportunity before the character
HY	Hyphen	HYPHEN-MINUS	Provide a line break opportunity after the character, except in numeric context
CB	Contingent Break Opportunity	Inline objects	Provide a line break opportunity contingent on additional information
Characters Prohibiting Certain Breaks
CL	Closing Punctuation	“)”, “]”, “}”, etc.	Prohibit line breaks before
EX	Exclamation/ Interrogation	“!”, “?”, etc.	Prohibit line breaks before
IN	Inseparable	Leaders	Allow only indirect line breaks between pairs
NS	Nonstarter	small kana	Allow only indirect line breaks before
OP	Opening Punctuation	“(“, “[“, “{“, etc.	Prohibit line breaks after
QU	Ambiguous Quotation	Quotation marks	Act like they are both opening and closing
Numeric Context
IS	Infix Separator (Numeric)	. ,	Prevent breaks after any and before numeric
NU	Numeric	Digits	Form numeric expressions for line breaking purposes
PO	Postfix (Numeric)	%, ¢	Do not break following a numeric expression
PR	Prefix (Numeric)	$, £, ¥, etc.	Do not break in front of a numeric expression
SY	Symbols Allowing Break After	/	Prevent a break before, and allow a break after
Other Characters
AI	Ambiguous (Alphabetic or Ideographic)	Characters with Ambiguous East Asian Width	Act like AL when the resolved EAW is N; otherwise, act as ID
AL	Ordinary Alphabetic and Symbol Characters	Alphabets and regular symbols	Are alphabetic characters or symbols that are used with alphabetic characters
H2	Hangul LV Syllable	Hangul	Form Korean syllable blocks
H3	Hangul LVT Syllable	Hangul	Form Korean syllable blocks
ID	Ideographic	Ideographs	Break before or after, except in some numeric context
JL	Hangul L Jamo	Conjoining jamo	Form Korean syllable blocks
JV	Hangul V Jamo	Conjoining jamo	Form Korean syllable blocks
JT	Hangul T Jamo	Conjoining jamo	Form Korean syllable blocks
SA	Complex Context Dependent (South East Asian)	South East Asian: Thai, Lao, Khmer	Provide a line break opportunity contingent on additional, language-specific context analysis
XX	Unknown	Unassigned, private-use	Have as yet unknown line breaking behavior or unassigned code positions

 

3 Introduction

Lines are broken as result of one of two conditions. The first condition is the presence of a mandatory line breaking character. The second condition results from a formatting algorithm having selected among available line break opportunities; ideally the chosen line break results in the optimal layout of the text.

Different formatting algorithms may use different methods to determine an optimal line break. For example, simple implementations consider a single line at a time, trying to find a locally optimal line break. A basic, yet widely used approach is to allow no compression or expansion of the intercharacter and interword spaces and consider the longest line that fits. More complex formatting algorithms often take into account the interaction of line breaking decisions for the whole paragraph. The well-known text layout system [T_EX] implements an example of such a globally optimal strategy that may make complex tradeoffs across an entire paragraph to avoid unnecessary hyphenation and other legal, but inferior breaks. For a description of this strategy, see [Knuth78].

When compression or expansion is allowed, a locally optimal line break seeks to balance the relative merits of the resulting amounts of compression and expansion for different line break candidates. When expanding or compressing interword space according to common typographical practice, only the spaces marked by U+0020 SPACE, U+00A0 NO-BREAK SPACE, and U+3000 IDEOGRAPHIC SPACE are subject to compression, and only spaces marked by U+0020 SPACE, U+00A0 NO-BREAK SPACE, and occasionally spaces marked by U+2009 THIN SPACE are subject to expansion. All other space characters normally have fixed width. When expanding or compressing intercharacter space, the presence of U+200B ZERO WIDTH SPACE or U+2060 WORD JOINER is always ignored.

Local custom or document style determines whether and to what degree expansion of intercharacter space is allowed in justifying a line. In languages, such as German, where intercharacter space is commonly used to mark  e m p h a s i s (like this), allowing variable intercharacter spacing would have the unintended effect of adding random emphasis, and is therefore best avoided. In table headings that use Han ideographs, even extreme amounts of intercharacter space commonly occur as short texts are spread out across the entire available space to distribute the characters evenly from end to end.

In linebreaking it is necessary to distinguish between two related tasks. The first is the determination of all legal line break opportunities, given a string of text. This is the scope of the Unicode Line Break Algorithm. The second task is the selection of the actual location for breaking a given line of text. This selection not only takes into account the width of the line compared to the width of the text, but may also apply an additional prioritization of line breaks based on aesthetic and other criteria. What defines an optimal choice for a given line break is outside the scope of this annex, as are methods for its selection.

Finally, text layout systems may support an emergency mode that handles the case of an unusual line that contains no otherwise permitted line break opportunities. In such line layout emergencies, line breaks may be placed with no regard to the ordinary line breaking behavior of the characters involved. The details of such an emergency mode are outside the scope of this annex, however, it is recommended that grapheme clusters be kept together.

3.1 Determining Line Break Opportunities

Three principal styles of context analysis determine line break opportunities.

1. Western: spaces and hyphens are used to determine breaks
2. East Asian: lines can break anywhere, unless prohibited
3. South East Asian: line breaks require morphological analysis

The Western style is commonly used for scripts employing the space character. Hyphenation is often used with space-based line breaking to provide additional line break opportunities—however, it requires knowledge of the language and it may need user interaction or overrides.

The second style of context analysis is used with East Asian ideographic and syllabic scripts. In these scripts, lines can break anywhere, except before or after certain characters. The precise set of prohibited line breaks may depend on user preference or local custom and is commonly tailorable.

Korean makes use of both styles of line break. When Korean text is justified, the second style is commonly used, even for interspersed Latin letters. But when ragged margins are used, the Western style (relying on spaces) is commonly used instead, even for ideographs.

The third style is used for scripts such as Thai, which do not use spaces, but which restrict word breaks to syllable boundaries, the determination of which requires knowledge of the language comparable to that required by a hyphenation algorithm. Such an algorithm is beyond the scope of the Unicode Standard.

For multilingual text, the Western and East Asian styles can be unified into a single set of specifications, based on the information in this annex. Unicode characters have explicit line breaking properties assigned to them. These properties can be utilized to implement the effect of both of these two styles of context analysis for line break opportunities. Customization for user preferences or document style can then be achieved by tailoring that specification.

In bidirectional text, line breaks are determined before applying rule L1 of the Unicode Bidirectional Algorithm [Bidi]. However, line breaking is strictly independent of directional properties of the characters or of any auxiliary information determined by the application of rules of that algorithm.

4 Conformance

There is no single method for determining line breaks; the rules may differ based on user preference and document layout. Therefore the information in this annex, including the specification of the line breaking algorithm, allows for the necessary flexibility in determining line breaks according to different conventions. However, some characters have been encoded explicitly for their effect on line breaking. Users adding such characters to a text expect that they will have the desired effect. For that reason, these characters have been given required line breaking behavior.

To handle certain situations, some line breaking implementations use techniques that cannot be expressed within the framework of the Unicode Line Breaking Algorithm. Examples include the use of dictionaries of words for languages that do not use spaces, such as Thai; recognition of the language of the text in order to choose among different punctuation conventions; the use of dictionaries of common abbreviations or contractions to resolve ambiguities with periods or apostrophes; or a deeper analysis of common syntaxes for numbers or dates, and so on. The conformance requirements permit variations of this kind.

Processes which support multiple modes for determining line breaks are also accommodated. This situation can arise with marked-up text, rich text, style sheets, or other environments in which a higher-level protocol can carry formatting instructions that prevent or force line breaks in positions that differ from those specified by the Unicode Line Break Algorithm. The approach taken here is to require that such processes have a conforming default line break behavior, and to disclose that they also include overrides or optional behaviors that are invoked via a higher-level protocol.

The methods by which a line layout process chooses optimal line breaks from among the available break opportunities is outside the scope of this specification. The behavior of a line layout process in situations where there are no suitable break opportunities is also outside of the scope of this specification.

4.1 Conformance Requirements

UAX14-C1. A process that determines line breaks in Unicode text, and that purports to implement the Unicode Line Breaking Algorithm, shall do so in accordance with the specifications in this annex. In particular, the following three subconditions shall be met:

1. The sets of mandatory break positions and of break opportunities which the implementation produces include all of those specified by the rules in Section 6.1, Non-tailorable Line Breaking Rules.
2. There exist no break opportunities or mandatory breaks produced by the implementation that fall on a "non-break" position specified by the rules in Section 6.1, Non-tailorable Line Breaking Rules.
3. If the implementation tailors the behavior of Section 6.2, Tailorable Line Breaking Rules, that fact must be disclosed.

UAX14-C2. If an implementation has a default line breaking operation which conforms to UAX14-C1, but also has overrides based on a higher-level protocol, that fact must be disclosed and any behavior that differs from that specified by the rules of Section 6.1, Non-tailorable Line Breaking Rules, must be documented.

Example: An xml format provides markup which disables all line breaking over some span of text. When the markup is not in place, the default behavior is in conformance according to UAX14-C1. As long as the existence of the option is disclosed, that format can be said to conform to the Unicode Line Breaking Algorithm according to UAX14-C2.

As is the case for all other Unicode algorithms, this specification is a logical description—particular implementations can have more efficient mechanisms as long as they produce the same results. See C18 in Chapter 3, Conformance, of [Unicode]. While only disclosure of tailorings is required in the conformance clauses, documentation of the differences in behaviors is strongly encouraged.

5 Line Breaking Properties

This section provides detailed narrative descriptions of the line breaking behavior of many Unicode characters. In many instances, the descriptions in this section provide additional informative detail about handling a given character at the end of a line, or during line layout, which goes beyond the simple determination of line breaks. In some cases, the text also gives guidance as to preferred characters for achieving a particular effect in line breaking.

This section also summarizes the membership of character classes for each value of the line breaking property. Note that the mnemonic names for the line break classes are intended neither as exhaustive descriptions of their membership nor as indicators of their entire range of behaviors in the line breaking process. Instead, their main purpose is to serve as unique, yet broadly mnemonic labels. In other words, as long as their line break behavior is identical, otherwise unrelated characters will be found grouped together in the same line break class.

The classification by property values defined in this section and in the data file is used as input into two algorithms defined in Section 6, Line Breaking Algorithm, and Section 7, Pair Table-Based Implementation. These sections describe workable default line breaking methods. Section 8, Customization, discusses how the default line breaking behavior can be tailored to the needs of particular languages for particular document styles and user preferences.

Data File

The full classification of all Unicode characters by their line breaking properties is available in the file LineBreak.txt [Data14] in the Unicode Character Database [UCD]. This is a tab-delimited, two-column, plain text file, with code position and line breaking class. A comment at the end of each line indicates the character name. Ideographic, Hangul, Surrogate, and Private Use ranges are collapsed by giving a range in the first column.

Future Updates

As more scripts are added to the Unicode Standard and become more widely implemented and used on computers, more line breaking classes may be added or the assignment of line breaking class may be changed for some characters. Implementers must not make any assumptions to the contrary. Any future updates will be reflected in the latest version of the data file. (See the Unicode Character Database [UCD] for any specific version of the data file.)

5.1 Description of Line Breaking Properties

Line breaking classes are listed alphabetically. Each line breaking class is marked with an annotation in parentheses with the following meanings:

(A)—the class allows a break opportunity after in specified contexts

(XA)—the class prevents a break opportunity after in specified contexts

(B)—the class allows a break opportunity before in specified contexts

(XB)—the class prevents a break opportunity before in specified contexts

(P)—the class allows a break opportunity for a pair of same characters

(XP)—the class prevents a break opportunity for a pair of same characters

Note: The use of the letters B and A in these annotations marks the position of the break opportunity relative to the character. It is not to be confused with the use of the same letters in the other parts of this annex, where they indicate the positions of the characters relative to the break opportunity.

AI: Ambiguous (Alphabetic or Ideograph)

Some characters that ordinarily act like alphabetic or symbol characters (which have the AL line breaking class) are treated like ideographs (line breaking class ID) in certain East Asian legacy contexts. Their line breaking behavior therefore depends on the context. In the absence of appropriate context information, they are treated as class AL, see the note at the end of this description.

As originally defined, the line break class AI contained all characters with East_Asian_Width value A (ambiguous width) that would otherwise be AL in this classification. For more information on East_Asian_Width and how to resolve it, see Unicode Standard Annex #11, East Asian Width [EAW].

The original definition included many Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic characters. These characters are now classified by default as AL because use of the AL line breaking class better corresponds to modern practice. Where strict compatibility with older legacy implementations is desired, some of these characters need to be treated as ID in certain contexts. This can be done by always tailoring them to ID or by continuing to classify them as AI and resolving them to ID where required.

As part of the same revision, the set of ambiguous characters has been extended to completely encompass the enclosed alphanumeric characters used for numbering of bullets.

As updated, the AI line breaking class includes all characters with East Asian Width A that are outside the range U+0000..U+1FFF, plus the following characters:

24EA	CIRCLED DIGIT ZERO
2780..2793	DINGBAT CIRCLED SANS-SERIF DIGIT ONE..DINGBAT NEGATIVE CIRCLED SANS-SERIF NUMBER TEN

Characters with the line break class AI with East_Asian_Width value A typically take the AL line breaking class when their resolved East_Asian_Width is N (narrow) and take the line breaking class ID when their resolved width is W (wide). The remaining characters are then resolved to AL or ID in a consistent fashion. The details of this resolution are not specified in this annex. The line breaking rules in Section 6, Line Breaking Algorithm, and the pair table in Section 7, Pair Table-Based Implementation, merely require that all ambiguous characters have been resolved appropriately as part of assigning line breaking classes to the input characters.

Note: The canonical decompositions of characters of class AI are not necessarily of class AI themselves, or conversely. The East_Asian_Width property A on which the definition of AI is largely based, does not preserve canonical equivalence. In the context of line breaking, the fact that a character has been assigned class AI means that the line break implementation must resolve it to either AL or ID, in the absence of further tailoring. If preserving canonical equivalence is desired, an implementation is free to make sure that the resolved line break classes preserve canonical equivalence. Unless compatibility with particular legacy behavior is important, it may be sufficient to map all such characters to AL. This achieves a canonically equivalent resolution of line breaking classes, and is compatible with emerging modern practice that treats these characters increasingly like regular alphabetic characters.

AL: Ordinary Alphabetic and Symbol Characters (XP)

Ordinary characters require other characters to provide break opportunities; otherwise, no line breaks are allowed between pairs of them. However, this behavior is tailorable. In some Far Eastern documents, it may be desirable to allow breaking between pairs of ordinary characters—particularly Latin characters and symbols.

Note: Use ZWSP as a manual override to provide break opportunities around alphabetic or symbol characters.

Except as listed explicitly below as part of another line breaking class, and except as assigned class AI or ID based on East Asian Width, this class contains the following characters:

ALPHABETIC—all remaining characters of General Categories Lu, Ll, Lt, Lm, and Lo
SYMBOLS—all remaining characters of General Categories Sm, Sk, and So
NON-DECIMAL NUMBERS—all remaining characters of General Categories Nl, and No
PUNCTUATION—all remaining characters of General Categories Pc, Pd, and Po

Plus these characters:

0600..0603	ARABIC NUMBER SIGN..ARABIC SIGN SAFHA
06DD	ARABIC END OF AYAH

070F	SYRIAC ABBREVIATION MARK
2061..2064	FUNCTION APPLICATION..INVISIBLE PLUS

These characters occur in the middle or at the beginning of words or alphanumeric or symbol sequences. However, when alphabetic characters are tailored to allow breaks, these characters should not allow breaks after.

BA: Break Opportunity After (A)

Like SPACE, the characters in this class provide a break opportunity; unlike SPACE, they do not take part in determining indirect breaks. They can be subdivided into several categories.

Breaking Spaces

Breaking spaces are the following subset of characters with General_Category Zs:

1680	OGHAM SPACE MARK

2000	EN QUAD
2001	EM QUAD
2002	EN SPACE
2003	EM SPACE
2004	THREE-PER-EM SPACE
2005	FOUR-PER-EM SPACE
2006	SIX-PER-EM SPACE
2008	PUNCTUATION SPACE
2009	THIN SPACE
200A	HAIR SPACE
205F	MEDIUM MATHEMATICAL SPACE

All of these space characters have a specific width, but otherwise behave as breaking spaces. In setting a justified line, none of these spaces normally changes in width, except for THIN SPACE when used in mathematical notation. See also the SP property.

The Ogham space mark may be rendered visibly between words but it is recommended that it be elided at the end of a line. For more information, see Section 5.7,, Word Separator Characters.

See the ID property for U+3000 IDEOGRAPHIC SPACE. For a list of all space characters in the Unicode Standard, see Section 6.2, General Punctuation, in [Unicode5.0].

Tabs

0009

TAB

Except for the effect of the location of the tab stops, the tab character acts similarly to a space for the purpose of line breaking.

Conditional Hyphens

00AD	SOFT HYPHEN (SHY)

SHY marks the place where an optional line break may occur inside a word. It can be used with all scripts. SHY is rendered invisibly and has no width: it merely indicates an optional line break. The rendering of the optional line break depends on the script. For the Latin script, rendering the line break typically means displaying a hyphen at the end of the line; however, some languages require a change in spelling surrounding an optional line break. For examples, see Section 5.4, Use of Soft Hyphen.

Breaking Hyphens

Breaking hyphens establish explicit break opportunities immediately after each occurrence.

058A	ARMENIAN HYPHEN
2010	HYPHEN
2012	FIGURE DASH
2013	EN DASH

Hyphens are graphic characters with width. Because, unlike spaces, they are visible, they are included in the measured part of the preceding line, except where the layout style allows hyphens to hang into the margins. For additional information about how to format line breaks resulting from the presence of hyphens, see Section 5.3, Use of Hyphen.

Visible Word Dividers

The following are other forms of visible word dividers that provide break opportunities:

05BE	HEBREW PUNCTUATION MAQAF
0F0B	TIBETAN MARK INTERSYLLABIC TSHEG
1361	ETHIOPIC WORDSPACE
17D8	KHMER SIGN BEYYAL
17DA	KHMER SIGN KOOMUUT

The Tibetan tsheg is a visible mark, but it functions effectively like a space to separate words (or other units) in Tibetan. It provides a break opportunity after itself. For additional information, see Section 5.6, Tibetan Line Breaking.

The Ethiopic word space is a visible word delimiter and is kept on the previous line. In contrast, U+1360 ETHIOPIC SECTION MARK is typically used in a sequence of several such marks on a separate line, and separated by spaces. As such lines are typically marked with separate hard line breaks (BK), the section mark is treated like an ordinary symbol and given line break class AL.

2027	HYPHENATION POINT

A hyphenation point is a raised dot, which is mainly used in dictionaries and similar works to visibly indicate syllabification of words. Syllable breaks frequently also are potential line break opportunities in the middle of words. When an actual line break falls inside a word containing hyphenation point characters, the hyphenation point is usually rendered as a regular hyphen at the end of the line.

007C	VERTICAL LINE

In some dictionaries, a vertical bar is used instead of a hyphenation point. In this usage, U+0323 COMBINING DOT BELOW is used to mark stressed syllables, so all breaks are marked by the vertical bar. For an actual break opportunity, the vertical bar is rendered as a hyphen in such usage.

Historic Word Separators

Historic texts, especially ancient ones, often do not use spaces, even for scripts where modern use of spaces is standard. Special punctuation was used to mark word boundaries in such texts. For modern text processing it is recommended to treat these as line break opportunities by default. WJ can be used to override this default, where necessary.

16EB	RUNIC SINGLE DOT PUNCTUATION
16EC	RUNIC MULTIPLE DOT PUNCTUATION
16ED	RUNIC CROSS PUNCTUATION
2056	THREE DOT PUNCTUATION
2058	FOUR DOT PUNCTUATION
2059	FIVE DOT PUNCTUATION
205A	TWO DOT PUNCTUATION
205B	FOUR DOT MARK
205D	TRICOLON
205E	VERTICAL FOUR DOTS
2E19	PALM BRANCH
2E2A	TWO DOTS OVER ONE DOT PUNCTUATION
2E2B	ONE DOT OVER TWO DOTS PUNCTUATION
2E2C	SQUARED FOUR DOT PUNCTUATION
2E2D	FIVE DOT PUNCTUATION
2E30	RING POINT
10100	AEGEAN WORD SEPARATOR LINE
10101	AEGEAN WORD SEPARATOR DOT
10102	AEGEAN CHECK MARK
1039F	UGARITIC WORD DIVIDER
103D0	OLD PERSIAN WORD DIVIDER
1091F	PHOENICIAN WORD DIVIDER
12470	CUNEIFORM PUNCTUATION SIGN OLD ASSYRIAN WORD DIVIDER

Dandas

DEVANAGARI DANDA is similar to a full stop. The danda or historically related symbols are used with several other Indic scripts. Unlike a full stop, the danda is not used in number formatting. DEVANAGARI DOUBLE DANDA marks the end of a verse. It also has analogues in other scripts.

0964	DEVANAGARI DANDA
0965	DEVANAGARI DOUBLE DANDA
0E5A	THAI CHARACTER ANGKHANKHU
0E5B	THAI CHARACTER KHOMUT
104A	MYANMAR SIGN LITTLE SECTION
104B	MYANMAR SIGN SECTION
1735	PHILIPPINE SINGLE PUNCTUATION
1736	PHILIPPINE DOUBLE PUNCTUATION
17D4	KHMER SIGN KHAN
17D5	KHMER SIGN BARIYOOSAN
1B5E	BALINESE CARIK SIKI
1B5F	BALINESE CARIK PAREREN
A8CE	SAURASHTRA DANDA
A8CF	SAURASHTRA DOUBLE DANDA
AA5D	CHAM PUNCTUATION DANDA
AA5E	CHAM PUNCTUATION DOUBLE DANDA
AA5F	CHAM PUNCTUATION TRIPLE DANDA
10A56	KHAROSHTHI PUNCTUATION DANDA
10A57	KHAROSHTHI PUNCTUATION DOUBLE DANDA

Tibetan

0F34	TIBETAN MARK BSDUS RTAGS
0F7F	TIBETAN SIGN RNAM BCAD
0F85	TIBETAN MARK PALUTA
0FBE	TIBETAN KU RU KHA
0FBF	TIBETAN KU RU KHA BZHI MIG CAN
0FD2	TIBETAN MARK NYIS TSHEG

For additional information, see Section 5.6, Tibetan Line Breaking.

Other Terminating Punctuation

Termination punctuation stays with the line, but otherwise allows a break after it. This is similar to EX, except that the latter may be separated by a space from the preceding word without allowing a break, whereas these marks are used without spaces.

1804	MONGOLIAN COLON
1805	MONGOLIAN FOUR DOTS
1B5A	BALINESE PANTI
1B5B	BALINESE PAMADA
1B5C	BALINESE WINDU
1B5D	BALINESE CARIK PAMUNGKAH
1B60	BALINESE PAMENENG
1C3B	LEPCHA PUNCTUATION TA-ROL
1C3C	LEPCHA PUNCTUATION NYET THYOOM TA-ROL
1C3D	LEPCHA PUNCTUATION CER-WA
1C3E	LEPCHA PUNCTUATION TSHOOK CER-WA
1C3F	LEPCHA PUNCTUATION TSHOOK
1C7E	OL CHIKI PUNCTUATION MUCAAD
1C7F	OL CHIKI PUNCTUATION DOUBLE MUCAAD
2CFA	COPTIC OLD NUBIAN DIRECT QUESTION MARK
2CFB	COPTIC OLD NUBIAN INDIRECT QUESTION MARK
2CFC	COPTIC OLD NUBIAN VERSE DIVIDER
2CFF	COPTIC MORPHOLOGICAL DIVIDER
2E0E..2E15	EDITORIAL CORONIS..UPWARDS ANCORA
2E17	OBLIQUE DOUBLE HYPHEN
A60D	VAI COMMA
A60F	VAI QUESTION MARK
A92E	KAYAH LI SIGN CWI
A92F	KAYAH LI SIGN SHYA
10A50	KHAROSHTHI PUNCTUATION DOT
10A51	KHAROSHTHI PUNCTUATION SMALL CIRCLE
10A52	KHAROSHTHI PUNCTUATION CIRCLE
10A53	KHAROSHTHI PUNCTUATION CRESCENT BAR
10A54	KHAROSHTHI PUNCTUATION MANGALAM
10A55	KHAROSHTHI PUNCTUATION LOTUS

BB: Break Opportunities Before (B)

Characters of this line break class move to the next line at a line break and thus provide a line break opportunity before.

Dictionary Use

00B4	ACUTE ACCENT
1FFD	GREEK OXIA

In some dictionaries, stressed syllables are indicated with a spacing acute accent instead of the hyphenation point. In this case the accent moves to the next line, and the preceding line ends with a hyphen. The oxia is canonically equivalent to the acute accent.

02DF	MODIFIER LETTER CROSS ACCENT

A cross accent also appears in some dictionaries to mark the stress of the following syllable, and should be handled in the same way as the other stress marking characters in this section. The accent should not be separated from the syllable it marks by a break.

02C8	MODIFIER LETTER VERTICAL LINE
02CC	MODIFIER LETTER LOW VERTICAL LINE

These characters are used in dictionaries to indicate stress and secondary stress when IPA is used. Both are prefixes to the stressed syllable in IPA. Breaking before them keeps them with the syllable.

Note: It is hard to find actual examples in most dictionaries because the pronunciation fields usually occur right after the headword, and the columns are wide enough to prevent line breaks in most pronunciations.

Tibetan and Phags-Pa Head Letters

0F01	TIBETAN MARK GTER YIG MGO TRUNCATED A
0F02	TIBETAN MARK GTER YIG MGO -UM RNAM BCAD MA
0F03	TIBETAN MARK GTER YIG MGO -UM GTER TSHEG MA
0F04	TIBETAN MARK INITIAL YIG MGO MDUN MA
0F06	TIBETAN MARK CARET YIG MGO PHUR SHAD MA
0F07	TIBETAN MARK YIG MGO TSHEG SHAD MA
0F09	TIBETAN MARK BSKUR YIG MGO
0F0A	TIBETAN MARK BKA- SHOG YIG MGO
0FD0	TIBETAN MARK BSKA- SHOG GI MGO RGYAN
0FD1	TIBETAN MARK MNYAM YIG GI MGO RGYAN
0FD3	TIBETAN MARK INITIAL BRDA RNYING YIG MGO MDUN MA
A874	PHAGS-PA SINGLE HEAD MARK
A875	PHAGS-PA DOUBLE HEAD MARK

Tibetan head letters allow a break before. For more information, see Section 5.6, Tibetan Line Breaking.

Mongolian

1806	MONGOLIAN TODO SOFT HYPHEN

Despite its name, this Mongolian character is not an invisible control like SOFT HYPHEN, but rather a visible character like a regular hyphen. Unlike the hyphen, MONGOLIAN TODO SOFT HYPHEN stays with the following line. Whenever optional line breaks are to be marked invisibly, SOFT HYPHEN should be used instead.

B2: Break Opportunity Before and After (B/A/XP)

2014

EM DASH

The EM DASH is used to set off parenthetical text. Normally, it is used without spaces. However, this is language dependent. For example, in Swedish, spaces are used around the EM DASH. Line breaks can occur before and after an EM DASH. Because  EM DASHes are sometimes used in pairs instead of a single quotation dash, the default behavior is not to break the line between even though not all fonts use connecting glyphs for the EM DASH.

BK: Mandatory Break (A) (Non-tailorable)

Explicit breaks act independently of the surrounding characters. No characters can be added to the BK class as part of tailoring, but implementations are not required to support the VT character.

000C	FORM FEED (FF)
000B	LINE TABULATION (VT)

FORM FEED separates pages. The text on the new page starts at the beginning of the line. In some layout modes there may be no visible advance to a new “page”.

2028	LINE SEPARATOR (LS)

The text after the Line Separator starts at the beginning of the line. This is similar to HTML <BR>.

2029	PARAGRAPH SEPARATOR (PS)

The text of the new paragraph starts at the beginning of the line. This character defines a paragraph break, causing suitable formatting to be applied, for example, interparagraph spacing or first line indentation. LS, FF, VT as well as CR, LF and NL do not define a paragraph break.

Newline Function (NLF)

Newline Functions are defined in the Unicode Standard as providing additional mandatory breaks. They are not individual characters, but are encoded as sequences of the control characters NEL, LF, and CR. If a character sequence for a Newline Function contains more than one character, it is kept together. The particular sequences that form an NLF depend on the implementation and other circumstances as described in Section 5.8, Newline Guidelines, of [Unicode5.0].

This specification defines the NLF implicitly. It defines the three character classes CR, LF, and NL. Their line break behavior, defined in rule LB5 in Section 6.1, Non-tailorable Line Breaking Rules, is to break after NL, LF, or CR, but not between CR and LF.

CB: Contingent Break Opportunity (B/A)

By default, there is a break opportunity both before and after any inline object. Object-specific line breaking behavior is implemented in the associated object itself, and where available can override the default to prevent either or both of the default break opportunities. Using U+FFFC OBJECT REPLACEMENT CHARACTER allows the object anchor to take a character position in the string.

FFFC	OBJECT REPLACEMENT CHARACTER

Object-specific line break behavior is best implemented by querying the object itself, not by replacing the CB line breaking class by another class.

CL: Closing Punctuation (XB)

The closing character of any set of paired punctuation should be kept with the preceding character, and the same applies to all forms of wide comma and full stop. This is desirable, even when there are intervening space characters, so as to prevent the appearance of a bare closing punctuation mark at the head of a line. The CL line break class contains the following characters plus any characters of General_Category Pe in the Unicode Character Database.

3001..3002	IDEOGRAPHIC COMMA..IDEOGRAPHIC FULL STOP
FE11	PRESENTATION FORM FOR VERTICAL IDEOGRAPHIC COMMA
FE12	PRESENTATION FORM FOR VERTICAL IDEOGRAPHIC FULL STOP
FE50	SMALL COMMA
FE52	SMALL FULL STOP
FF0C	FULLWIDTH COMMA
FF0E	FULLWIDTH FULL STOP
FF61	HALFWIDTH IDEOGRAPHIC FULL STOP
FF64	HALFWIDTH IDEOGRAPHIC COMMA

CM: Attached Characters and Combining Marks (XB) (Non-tailorable)

Combining Characters

Combining character sequences are treated as units for the purpose of line breaking. The line breaking behavior of the sequence is that of the base character.

The preferred base character for showing combining marks in isolation is U+00A0 No-Break SPACE. If a line break before or after the combining sequence is desired, U+200B ZERO WIDTH SPACE can be used. The use of U+0020 SPACE as a base character is deprecated.

For most purposes, combining characters take on the properties of their base characters, and that is how the CM class is treated in rule LB9 of this specification. As a result, if the sequence <0021, 20E4> is used to represent a triangle enclosing an exclamation point, it is effectively treated as EX, the line break class of the exclamation mark. If U+2061 CAUTION SIGN had been used, which also looks like an exclamation point inside a triangle, it would have the line break class of AL. Only the latter corresponds to the line breaking behavior expected by users for this symbol. To avoid surprising behavior, always use a base character that is a symbol or letter (Line Break AL) when using enclosing combining marks (General_Category Me).

The CM line break class includes all combining characters with General_Category Mc, Me, and Mn, unless listed explicitly elsewhere. This includes viramas.

Control and Formatting Characters

Most control and formatting characters are ignored in line breaking and do not contribute to the line width. By giving them class CM, the line breaking behavior of the last preceding character that is not of class CM affects the line breaking behavior.

Note: When control codes and format characters are rendered visibly during editing, more graceful layout might be achieved by treating them as if they had the line break class of the visible symbols instead, that is AL or ID. Such visible modes do not violate the constraint on tailorability, because they are logically equivalent to having temporarily substituted symbol characters, such as the characters from the Control Pictures block, or in some cases, character sequences, for the actual control characters.

The CM line break class includes all characters of General_Category Cc and Cf, unless listed explicitly elsewhere.

CR: Carriage Return (A) (Non-tailorable)

000D	CARRIAGE RETURN (CR)

A CR indicates a mandatory break after, unless followed by a LF. See also the discussion under BK.

Note: On some platforms the character sequence <CR, CR, LF> is used to indicate the location of actual line breaks, whereas <CR, LF> is treated like a hard line break. As soon as a user edits the text, the location of all the <CR, CR, LF> sequences may change as the new text breaks differently, while the relative position of any <CR, LF> to the surrounding text stays the same. This convention allows an editor to return a buffer and the client to tell which text is displayed on which line by counting the number of <CR, CR, LF> and <CR, LF> sequences. This convention is essentially equivalent to markup that captures the result of applying the line break algorithm, not a tailoring of the CR character. The <CR, CR, LF> sequences are thus not considered part of the plain text content.

EX: Exclamation/Interrogation (XB)

Characters in this line break class behave like closing characters, except in relation to postfix (PO) and non-starter characters (NS).

0021	EXCLAMATION MARK
003F	QUESTION MARK
05C6	HEBREW PUNCTUATION NUN HAFUKHA
061B	ARABIC SEMICOLON
061E	ARABIC TRIPLE DOT PUNCTUATION MARK
061F	ARABIC QUESTION MARK
06D4	ARABIC FULL STOP
07F9	NKO EXCLAMATION MARK
0F0D	TIBETAN MARK SHAD
0F0E	TIBETAN MARK NYIS SHAD
0F0F	TIBETAN MARK TSHEG SHAD
0F10	TIBETAN MARK NYIS TSHEG SHAD
0F11	TIBETAN MARK RIN CHEN SPUNGS SHAD
0F14	TIBETAN MARK GTER TSHEG
1802	MONGOLIAN COMMA
1803	MONGOLIAN FULL STOP
1808	MONGOLIAN MANCHU COMMA
1809	MONGOLIAN MANCHU FULL STOP
1944	LIMBU EXCLAMATION MARK
1945	LIMBU QUESTION MARK
2762	HEAVY EXCLAMATION MARK ORNAMENT
2763	HEAVY HEART EXCLAMATION MARK ORNAMENT
2CF9	COPTIC OLD NUBIAN FULL STOP
2CFE	COPTIC FULL STOP
2E2E	REVERSED QUESTION MARK
A60C	VAI SYLLABLE LENGTHENER
A60E	VAI FULL STOP
A876	PHAGS-PA MARK SHAD
A877	PHAGS-PA MARK DOUBLE SHAD
FE15	PRESENTATION FORM FOR VERTICAL EXCLAMATION MARK
FE16	PRESENTATION FORM FOR VERTICAL QUESTION MARK
FE56..FE57	SMALL QUESTION MARK..SMALL EXCLAMATION MARK
FF01	FULLWIDTH EXCLAMATION MARK
FF1F	FULLWIDTH QUESTION MARK

GL: Non-breaking (“Glue”) (XB/XA) (Non-tailorable)

Non-breaking characters prohibit breaks on either side, but that prohibition can be overridden by SP or ZW. In particular, when NBSP follows SPACE, there is a break opportunity after the SPACE and NBSP will go as visible space onto the next line. See also WJ. The following lists the characters of line break class GL with additional description.

00A0	NO-BREAK SPACE (NBSP)
202F	NARROW NO-BREAK SPACE (NNBSP)
180E	MONGOLIAN VOWEL SEPARATOR (MVS)

NO-BREAK SPACE is the preferred character to use where two words are to be visually separated but kept on the same line, as in the case of a title and a name “Dr.<NBSP>Joseph Becker”. When SPACE follows NBSP, there is no break, because there never is a break in front of SPACE. NARROW NO-BREAK SPACE is used in Mongolian. The mongolian vowel separator acts like a NNBSP in its line breaking behavior. It additionally affects the shaping of certain vowel characters as described in Section 13.2, Mongolian, of [Unicode5.0].

NARROW NO-BREAK SPACE (NNBSP) is a narrow version of NO-BREAK SPACE, which except for its display width behaves exactly the same in its line breaking behavior. It is regularly used in Mongolian in certain grammatical contexts (before a particle), where it also influences the shaping of the glyphs for the particle. In Mongolian text, the NNBSP is typically displayed with 1/3 the width of a normal space character.

When NARROW NO-BREAK SPACE occurs in French text, it should be interpreted as an “espace fine insécable”.

The MONGOLIAN VOWEL SEPARATOR is equivalent to a NNBSP in its line breaking behavior, but has different effects in controlling the shaping of its preceding and following characters. It constitutes a word-internal space and is typically displayed with half the width of a NNBSP.

034F	COMBINING GRAPHEME JOINER

This character has no visible glyph and its presence indicates that adjoining characters are to be treated as a graphemic unit, therefore preventing line breaks between them. The use of grapheme joiner affects other processes, such as sorting, therefore, U+2060 WORD JOINER should be used if the intent is to merely prevent a line break.

2007	FIGURE SPACE

This is the preferred space to use in numbers. It has the same width as a digit and keeps the number together for the purpose of line breaking.

2011	NON-BREAKING HYPHEN (NBHY)

This is the preferred character to use where words need to be hyphenated but may not be broken at the hyphen. Because of this use as a substitute for ordinary hyphen, the appearance of this character should match that of U+2010 HYPHEN.

0F08	TIBETAN MARK SBRUL SHAD
0F0C	TIBETAN MARK DELIMITER TSHEG BSTAR
0F12	TIBETAN MARK RGYA GRAM SHAD

The TSHEG BstAR looks exactly like a Tibetan tsheg, but can be used to prevent a break like no-break space. It inhibits breaking on either side. For more information, see Section 5.6, Tibetan Line Breaking.

035C..0362

COMBINING DOUBLE BREVE BELOW..COMBINING DOUBLE RIGHTWARDS ARROW BELOW

These diacritics span two characters, so no word or line breaks are possible on either side.

H2: Hangul LV Syllable (B/A)

This class includes all characters of Hangul Syllable Type LV.

Together with conjoining jamos, Hangul syllables form Korean Syllable Blocks, which are kept together; see [Boundaries]. Korean uses space-based line breaking in many styles of documents. To support these, Hangul syllables and conjoining jamo need to be tailored to use class AL. The default in this specification is class ID, which supports the case of Korean documents not using space-based line breaking. See Section 8.1, Types of Tailoring. See also JL, JT, JV, and H3.

H3: Hangul LVT Syllable (B/A)

This class includes all characters of Hangul Syllable Type LVT. See also JL, JT, JV, and H2.

HY: Hyphen (XA)

002D	HYPHEN-MINUS

Some additional context analysis is required to distinguish usage of this character as a hyphen from its usage as a minus sign (or indicator of numerical range). If used as hyphen, it acts like hyphen, which has line break class BA.

Note: Some typescript conventions use runs of HYPHEN-MINUS to stand in for longer dashes or horizontal rules. If actual character code conversion is not performed and it is desired to treat them like the characters or layout elements they stand for, line breaking needs to support these runs explicitly.

ID: Ideographic (B/A)

Note: This class includes characters other than Han ideographs.

Characters with this property do not require other characters to provide break opportunities; lines can ordinarily break before and after and between pairs of ideographic characters. The ID line break class consists of the following characters:

2E80..2FFF	CJK, KANGXI RADICALS, DESCRIPTION SYMBOLS
3000	IDEOGRAPHIC SPACE
3040..309F	Hiragana (except small characters)
30A0..30FF	Katakana (except small characters)
3400..4DB5	CJK UNIFIED IDEOGRAPHS EXTENSION A
4E00..9FBB	CJK UNIFIED IDEOGRAPHS
F900..FAD9	CJK COMPATIBILITY IDEOGRAPHS
A000..A48F	YI SYLLABLES
A490..A4CF	YI RADICALS
FE62..FE66	SMALL PLUS SIGN to SMALL EQUALS SIGN
FF10..FF19	WIDE DIGITS
20000..2A6D6	CJK UNIFIED IDEOGRAPHS EXTENSION B
2F800..2FA1D	CJK COMPATIBILITY IDEOGRAPHS SUPPLEMENT

It also includes all of the FULLWIDTH LATIN letters and all of the blocks in the range 3000..33FF not covered elsewhere.

Note: Use U+2060 WORD JOINER as a manual override to prevent break opportunities around characters of class ID.

U+3000 IDEOGRAPHIC SPACE may be subject to expansion or compression during line justification.

Korean

Korean is encoded with conjoining jamo, Hangul syllables, or both. See also JL, JT, JV, H2, and H3. The following set of compatibility jamo is treated as ID by default.

3130..318F

HANGUL COMPATIBILITY JAMO

IN: Inseparable Characters (XP)

Leaders

These characters are intended to be used in consecutive sequence. There is never a line break between two character of this class.

2024	ONE DOT LEADER
2025	TWO DOT LEADER
2026	HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS
FE19	PRESENTATION FORM FOR VERTICAL HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS

Horizontal ellipsis can be used as a three-dot leader.

IS: Numeric Separator (Infix) (XB)

Characters that usually occur inside a numerical expression may not be separated from the numeric characters that follow, unless a space character intervenes. For example, there is no break in “100.00” or “10,000”, nor in “12:59”.

002C	COMMA
002E	FULL STOP
003A	COLON
003B	SEMICOLON
037E	GREEK QUESTION MARK (canonically equivalent to 003B)
0589	ARMENIAN FULL STOP
060C	ARABIC COMMA
060D	ARABIC DATE SEPARATOR
07F8	NKO COMMA
2044	FRACTION SLASH
FE10	PRESENTATION FORM FOR VERTICAL COMMA
FE13	PRESENTATION FORM FOR VERTICAL COLON
FE14	PRESENTATION FORM FOR VERTICAL SEMICOLON

When not used in a numeric context, infix separators are sentence-ending punctuation. Therefore they always prevent breaks before.

Note: Figure Space, not being a punctuation mark, has been given the line break class GL.

JL: Hangul L Jamo (B)

The JL line break class consists of all characters of Hangul Syllable Type L.

Conjoining jamos form Korean Syllable Blocks, which are kept together; see [Boundaries]. Korean uses space-based line breaking in many styles of documents. To support these, Hangul syllables and conjoining jamo need to be tailored to use class AL. The default in this specification is class ID, which supports the case of Korean documents not using space-based line breaking. See Section 8.1, Types of Tailoring. See also JT, JV, H2, and H3.

JT: Hangul T Jamo (A)

The JT line break class consists of all characters of Hangul Syllable Type T. See also JL, JV, H2, and H3.

JV: Hangul V Jamo (XA/XB)

The JV line break class consists of all characters of Hangul Syllable Type V. See also JL, JT, H2, and H3.

LF: Line Feed (A) (Non-tailorable)

000A	LINE FEED (LF)

There is a mandatory break after any LF character, but see the discussion under BK.

NL: Next Line (A) (Non-tailorable)

0085	NEXT LINE (NEL)

The NL class acts like BK in all respects (there is a mandatory break after any NEL character). It cannot be tailored, but implementations are not required to support the NEL character; see the discussion under BK.

NS: Nonstarters (XB)

Nonstarter characters cannot start a line, but unlike CL they may allow a break in some contexts when they follow one or more space characters. Nonstarters include

17D6	KHMER SIGN CAMNUC PII KUUH
203C	DOUBLE EXCLAMATION MARK
203D	INTERROBANG
2047	DOUBLE QUESTION MARK
2048	QUESTION EXCLAMATION MARK
2049	EXCLAMATION QUESTION MARK
3005	IDEOGRAPHIC ITERATION MARK
301C	WAVE DASH
303C	MASU MARK
303B	VERTICAL IDEOGRAPHIC ITERATION MARK
309B.. 309E	KATAKANA-HIRAGANA VOICED SOUND MARK..HIRAGANA VOICED ITERATION MARK
30A0	KATAKANA-HIRAGANA DOUBLE HYPHEN
30FB..30FE	KATAKANA MIDDLE DOT..KATAKANA VOICED ITERATION MARK
A015	YI SYLLABLE WU (misnomer for YI SYLLABLE ITERATION MARK)
FE54..FE55	SMALL SEMICOLON..SMALL COLON
FF1A..FF1B	FULLWIDTH COLON.. FULLWIDTH SEMICOLON
FF65	HALFWIDTH KATAKANA MIDDLE DOT
FF70	HALFWIDTH KATAKANA-HIRAGANA PROLONGED SOUND MARK
FF9E..FF9F	HALFWIDTH KATAKANA VOICED SOUND MARK..HALFWIDTH KATAKANA SEMI-VOICED SOUND MARK

plus all Hiragana, Katakana, and Halfwidth Katakana “small” characters.

Note: Optionally, the NS restriction may be relaxed and some or all characters treated like ID to achieve a more permissive style of line breaking, especially in some East Asian document styles.

For additional information about U+30A0 KATAKANA-HIRAGANA DOUBLE HYPHEN, see Section 5.5, Use of Double Hyphen.

NU: Numeric (XP)

These characters behave like ordinary characters (AL) in the context of most characters but activate the prefix and postfix behavior of prefix and postfix characters.

Numeric characters consist of decimal digits (all characters of General_Category Nd), except those with East_Asian_Width F (Fullwidth), plus these characters:

066B	ARABIC DECIMAL SEPARATOR
066C	ARABIC THOUSANDS SEPARATOR

Unlike IS characters, the Arabic numeric punctuation does not occur as sentence terminal punctuation outside numbers.

OP: Opening Punctuation (XA)

The opening character of any set of paired punctuation should be kept with the following character. This is desirable, even when there are intervening space characters, so as to prevent the appearance of a bare opening punctuation mark at the end of a line. The OP line break class consists of all characters of General_Category Ps in the Unicode Character Database, plus

00A1	INVERTED EXCLAMATION MARK
00BF	INVERTED QUESTION MARK
2E18	INVERTED INTERROBANG

Note: The first two of these characters used to be classed AI based on their East_Asian_Width assignment of A. Such characters are normally resolved to either ID or AL. However, the characters listed above are used as punctuation marks in Spanish, where they would behave more like a character of class OP.

PO: Postfix (Numeric) (XB)

Characters that usually follow a numerical expression may not be separated from preceding numeric characters or preceding closing characters, even if one or more space characters intervene. For example, there is no break opportunity in “(12.00) %”.

Some of these characters—in particular, degree sign and percent sign—can appear on both sides of a numeric expression. Therefore the line breaking algorithm by default does not break between PO and numbers or letters on either side.

The list of postfix characters is

0025	PERCENT SIGN
00A2	CENT SIGN
00B0	DEGREE SIGN
060B	AFGHANI SIGN
066A	ARABIC PERCENT SIGN
2030	PER MILLE SIGN
2031	PER TEN THOUSAND SIGN