Use nbsp!

Again a little thing that makes our pages a bit more perfect. After you’ve created the design, written the XHTML and styled it up using CSS you have to concentrate on something else. Typography. At least, you put some ” instead of " in there and that’s it.

I’ve found out another thing that’s important. They even use it in the “real” world (newspapers, magazines). The non-breaking-space. Sure, everyone knows about it. But do you use it? As it’s meant to be?

So we’ve got normal text and its lines will break like this:

(first example)

Taking the car in New York is -
especially in summer – not good.

Looks fine? No. Insert a  .

<p>Taking the car in New York is -&nbsp;especially in summer - not good.</p>

Result looks like:

Taking the car in New York is
- especially in summer – not good.

(second example)

Order them now for just 99
US$ and you’ll get one free!

<p>Order them now for just 99&nbsp;US$ and you'll get one free!</p>

Order them now for just
99 US$ and you’ll get one free!

(third example)

It would be kind of you to visit my home
page now. If not, I’ll become angry.

<p>It would be kind of you to visit my
<a href="http://example.com/">home&nbsp;page</a> now. If not, I'll become angry.</p>

It would be kind of you to visit my
home page now. If not, I’ll become angry.

I hope you see that the result looks more professional. You don’t need to browse all your articles and add non-breaking-spaces, but just have a thought of them when writing new things. Especially on the front page of a website it makes a better impression to use them. Just in case a line breaks where you don’t want it to.