SUMMARY re seeking the space character

["Mark L. Levinson" <markl -at- gilian -dot- com>]

A week or two ago I asked if some readily available font 
includes a symbol for the space character-- the low little
squared-off U that FrameMaker uses, the lowercase b with
the slashed ascender, or anything else.

Thanks to everyone who responded.

For FrameMaker's symbol, Alan Wood wrote--

  The closest I can find in Unicode is counterbore in the 
  Miscellaneous Technical range, decimal 9012, hex 2334, which 
  is present in Arial Unicode MS, Bitstream Cyberbase and 
  Code 2000.  If you make it a subscript it comes close to 
  what you are looking for.  See:

  http://www.hclrss.demon.co.uk/unicode/miscellaneous_technical.html

and Jaque Foreman wrote--

  You could also use a "small capital U" in Bank Gothic
  BT light, Eurostile, or Square.

Bill Swallow and others pointed out that the FrameMaker symbol
I mentioned is the symbol for a nonbreaking space; FrameMaker
has no symbol for the regular space.

For the slashed b, Alan Wood wrote--

  Unicode has Latin small letter b with stroke in the Latin 
  Extended-B range, decimal 384, hex 0180, which is present in 
  Arial Unicode MS and Code 2000. See:

  http://www.hclrss.demon.co.uk/unicode/latin_extended_b.html

and Bruce H. Johnson wrote--

  I've had good luck in MS Word with the EQ field: {EQ \O(b,/)} 
  which gives the slashed b. 

and Jo Baer wrote--

  Depending on the capabilities of the software you're using, 
  you could use overstrike to layer the slash over the lower-case 
  b. I think this is more universally recognized than the 
  FrameMaker "hard space" character, but I could be wrong--it 
  happens frequently.

Regarding alternatives, Jacque Foreman wrote--

  Many years ago when I used a "dedicated" typesetter, the "space
  character" was the "insert" or caret symbol: ^ at baseline level.
  You could also use a square as obtained by ascii character 141 
  (and several others).

and Corinne Backer wrote--

  In journalism school, we used the pound sign # as the symbol 
  for a space.  It's widely recognized in the editing world, too.

Elizabeth Ross put forward the same symbol, calling it the 
hash mark, from the vantage point of copyediting.

Thanks again to everyone.  I asked in the first place because 
I had a data-formatting topic at hand that, without some way of 
explicitly depicting a space, seemed hard to illustrate.  As it 
happens, the software feature was slightly changed in the meantime
and the problem has disappeared.  Nonetheless, I'm grateful for
all this information.  It does fill a gap, if you'll pardon the
expression.

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Mark L. Levinson - markl -at- gilian -dot- com - If it's urgent, phone.
 Tel. 09-9560036 ext. 215 (work), 09-9552411/9555720 (home)
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