soft hyphen
English
Noun
soft hyphen (plural soft hyphens)
- (computing, typography) A generally invisible text character marking a point where hyphenation can occur without forcing a line break in an inconvenient place if the text is later reflowed.
Usage notes
The interpretation of this character varies among standards and some text systems. Unicode defines it incompatibly with ISO 8859-1 which defines it as "[a] graphic character that is imaged by a graphic symbol identical with, or similar to, that representing hyphen, for use when a line break has been established within a word."
Synonyms
- discretionary hyphen
Translations
a generally invisible text character marking a point where hyphenation can occur without forcing a line break in an inconvenient place if the text is later reflowed
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