Mellanslaget

Mellanslaget is the term used in Swedish typography and computing for the space character that separates words and other elements in text. In practice it corresponds to the standard space in digital encoding, most commonly the Unicode character U+0020. The concept is important in both writing and typesetting, where its presence affects readability and line breaks.

There are variations of mellanslag. The ordinary mellanslag is the regular space between words. A non-breaking mellanslag (icke-brytande mellanslag) is a variant that prevents a line break at its position, keeping adjacent elements together. This is often used in contexts such as abbreviations, dates, units, and currency amounts (for example, to avoid breaking a number from its unit or a year from following text).

Rules and conventions vary by language and style guide, but in Swedish typography there is typically no space before punctuation marks such as comma, period, colon, or semicolon, and a single space is used after punctuation that ends a sentence. Numbers often employ mellanslag as a thousands separator in printed and formal text, with non-breaking spaces used to keep numbers with their units from breaking across lines (for example, 3 000 kr).

In computing, the mellanslag is entered via the space bar on keyboards and is represented in text data as the space character. HTML and other markup environments distinguish between a regular mellanslag and a non-breaking mellanslag ( ). Other space characters, such as thin or hair spaces, may be used for typographic fine-tuning.

See also: whitespace, non-breaking space, typographic spacing, thousands separator.