Zero-width non-joiner

The zero-width non-joiner (ZWNJ, /zwɪndʒ/; rendered: ‌; HTML entity: ‌ or ‌) is a non-printing character used in the computerization of writing systems that make use of ligatures. For example, in writing systems that feature initial, medial and final letter-forms, such as the Persian alphabet, when a ZWNJ is placed between two characters that would otherwise be joined into a ligature, it instead prevents the ligature and causes them to be printed in their final and initial forms, respectively. This is also an effect of a space character, but a ZWNJ is used when it is desirable to keep the characters closer together or to connect a word with its morpheme.

The ZWNJ is encoded in Unicode as U+200C ZERO WIDTH NON-JOINER (‌).