Sanavälejä

Sanavälejä are whitespace characters used to separate words in written text. In most languages that use the Latin alphabet, the primary sanaväli is the regular space (Unicode U+0020). Other spacing characters may be used in typography to achieve specific effects, such as the non-breaking space (U+00A0), which keeps adjacent words from being split at line breaks, or various thinner or wider spaces (for example hair space U+200A, thin space U+2009, en space U+2002, em space U+2003).

The main function of sanavälejä is to mark word boundaries, aiding readability and machine processing. In natural language processing and search indexing, text is often tokenized by splitting on whitespace. In languages and scripts that do not use spaces to separate words—such as Chinese or Japanese—word segmentation is needed, and sanavälejä are not a universal delimiter.

Typography and layout considerations influence sanavälejä beyond basic word separation. Hyphenation and line-breaking rules determine how words are split at the end of a line, and typographic conventions may require or discourage certain spaces around punctuation. In many style guides, there is a standard practice regarding spacing after sentences and around punctuation marks; deviations can affect readability and visual consistency.

Digital text handling frequently involves normalization of whitespace. Multiple consecutive spaces may be collapsed to a single space, while non-breaking spaces are preserved to prevent undesirable line breaks. Accessibility and search indexing can also be affected by how sanavälejä are used or misused, particularly when rendering on different devices or in assistive technologies.

Historically, typewriter usage popularized the practice of doubling spaces after sentences, a convention now largely abandoned in modern typography, where single-sanaväli usage is standard.