# Last edited on 2019-03-19 04:41:36 by jstolfi

Hi, thanks for cleaning up several articles that I created recently!<br/>However, may I try to convince you to stop adding the <nowiki>&nbsp;</nowiki> between numbers and units of measure?<br/>The only advantage of that <nowiki>&nbsp;</nowiki> is to avoid a few occasional "bad" breaks.  However, it has a number of disadvantages:<br/>'''1'''. It is a markup for purely visual effect. Since its creation, one of the pillars of Wikipedia has been that contents is infinitely more important than form. Editors should be encouraged to make articles informative, rather than pretty.  For example, that is why it decided for simple straight quotes (") instead of paired open-close quotes, and straight apostrophes (') instead of various curved and tilted ones. That is also why editors cannot change font styles and sizes. In that spirit, editors should not worry about occasional bad line breaks.<br/>
'''2'''. Editors who are not computer experts will not know what the <nowiki>&nbsp;</nowiki> means. And that includes many editors who are experts in other fields, whose input Wikipedia desperately needs.
'''3'''. The <nowiki>&nbsp;</nowiki> does not eliminate line breaks; it only shifts them elsewhere.  In general, the result of line breaking becomes less satisfactory when the available break positions are reduced. Thus, eliminating a "bad" line break that way may make the text uglier.
'''3'''. Optimum line breaking is a task that must be performed by the reader's browser, not by Wikipedia's editors or servers.  Ideally the browser should automatically increase the penalty for breaking between a digit and what looks like a unit of measurement.  If a browser does not do that, that is a flaw of the browser -- not of Wikipedia and its editors.
'''4'''. The <nowiki>&nbsp;</nowiki> make the measurements in the wikisource '''much''' harder to read and edit.