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  is an HTML entity used to create a nonbreaking space.   is a response to the inability of early HTML to match the layout demands users expected from word processing and related software. Indention, the creation of extra space between words, and the design of tables with empty cells were all applications of  . The use of   offered an alternative to the single-pixel GIF file many Web writers used in order to artificially create extra space. However, improvements to HTML and the addition of Cascading Style Sheet selectors that permit alignment and positioning have made most of these uses irrelevant. Today, indenting and spatial control within sentences is far more fine grained. All in all, although   is a typographic carryover, its continued use addresses the difficultiesWeb writers still face in recreating the spacing found in print documents. The purpose of a nonbreaking space is to create a blank space between two characters that cannot be separated by a line break. The reason for using a nonbreaking space is to deny text wrapping between characters. Although this is an example of the standard use of the nonbreaking space,   is also often seen as being overused by nonprofessional Web designers as a means of quickly getting blank space onto a Web page. An example of the more standard use of the nonbreaking space is in French, where a question mark is separated from the rest of a sentence by a space, whereas in English, it rests against the last character. If a spacebar-generated space, for instance, is used to separate the question mark from the rest of the sentence in an HTML document, some word-wrapping algorithms will allow the question mark to be put on the next line. If the nonbreaking space is used instead, this can be guaranteed not to happen (Gillam 443).The role of   on aWeb page is therefore to separate two characters by a blank space, as well as to hold these two • 8 1 A N A C C I D E N T A L I M P E R A T I V E The Menacing Presence of   Brian Willems 6 characters together by not allowing them to be separated by word wrapping (Heslop 47). In this sense, such characters, or bodies, can be thought of as those that are both separated and joined. Here, I use the dual nature of   to explore what it is that can be encoded in a tag or marker by examining a number of manifestations of the copresencing of unity and disjointedness in writing. This is developed through punctuation, futuristic bar codes, and pattern recognition. What Is Punctuation, if Not Code? Another way of envisioning a body as an entity that is both separated and joined by code is indicated by simply making this passive statement active by saying that code concomitantly separates and joins bodies. The reason for making what might seem like a tautological move here is to call attention to the imperative role of the nonbreaking space as markup that commands, or demands, such a dual nature in a body. The role of such a demand in an imperative is, first, a demand to be understood. Philosopher Werner Hamacher writes that the imperative is “the demand that understanding must take place; the imperative of understanding itself” (81). This statement forms one of the keystones of this essay. The first half of Hamacher’s statement indicates how the addresser of the imperative demands an understanding of that imperative by the addressee, who is expected to understand and accomplish the action demanded.Therefore, a space is created between the two entities of addresser and addressee, and this space is indicated by understanding. The second half of Hamacher’s statement is a claim for essence, or essencing, in the form of the imperative as an act of understanding itself. In order to attempt a way of conceiving the second half of this statement, a step backward is necessary, by which I mean that something was skipped in this description of the two halves of Hamacher’s statement. This skipped space is occupied by a semicolon. A semicolon is punctuation used to separate and conjoin two equal clauses or ideas in a sentence. Hamacher’s midquotation punctuation both separates the two halves of his sentence into two discrete ideas and unites these two ideas into a single statement.This copresencing of separation and uni- fication is the same as what is central to the nonbreaking aspect...

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