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Undertoad · 05-21-2008, 08:41 AM

Back in the day the Cellar allowed HTML in posts. At some point people started to develop hacks for HTML in forums, and it became necessary to prevent HTML usage. That just left a lot of bare HTML in posts, where people used it.

  is an HTML character code for "no break space", basically a space character that the browser isn't allowed to drop for typography purposes, even if it happens at the beginning of a line. Browsers make typography decisions about text, and so if you put a bunch of space characters in to format a post, the browsers will just throw them all away. But they can't throw away   so people get in the habit of using them for formatting.

05-21-2008, 08:41 AM	#6
Undertoad Radical Centrist Join Date: Jan 2001 Location: Cottage of Prussia Posts: 31,423	Back in the day the Cellar allowed HTML in posts. At some point people started to develop hacks for HTML in forums, and it became necessary to prevent HTML usage. That just left a lot of bare HTML in posts, where people used it.   is an HTML character code for "no break space", basically a space character that the browser isn't allowed to drop for typography purposes, even if it happens at the beginning of a line. Browsers make typography decisions about text, and so if you put a bunch of space characters in to format a post, the browsers will just throw them all away. But they can't throw away   so people get in the habit of using them for formatting.