General Punctuation
General Punctuation is a Unicode block containing punctuation, spacing, and formatting characters for use with all scripts and writing systems. Included are the defined-width spaces, joining formats, directional formats, smart quotes, archaic and novel punctuation such as the interrobang, and invisible mathematical operators. Additional punctuation characters are in the Supplemental Punctuation block and sprinkled in dozens of other Unicode blocks. Block. Several characters in this block are usually not rendered with a directly visible glyph. Ten whitespace characters U+2002 through U+200B (fixed "en" or "em, em, em, em, em, figure" and "punctuation space", variable "thin" or "em  and hair space", fixed "zero-width space") and U+205F ("math medium" or " em space") differ by horizontal width, while U+2000 and U+2001 ("en" and "em quad") are effectively aliases of U+2002 and U+2003, respectively; another two, U+202F and U+2060 (ill-termed "word joiner") are variants of U+2009 or U+2004 and U+200B that prohibit line-breaks. Three zero-width characters U+200B through U+200D ("space, non-joiner" and "joiner") differ in how they affect ligation and shaping of adjacent letters such as contextual forms in Arabic. Eleven invisible characters U+200E, U+200F ("left-to-right" and "right-to-left mark"), U+202A through U+202E  ("embeds, pops" and "overrides") and U+2066 through U+2069 ("isolates") control the directionality of text unless higher-level markup overrides them. There are explicit "line" and "paragraph separators" at U+2028 and U+2029. Emoji. The General Punctuation block contains two emoji: U+203C and U+2049. The block has four standardized variants defined to specify emoji-style (U+FE0F VS16) or text presentation (U+FE0E VS15) for the two emoji, both of which default to a text presentation. History. The following Unicode-related documents record the purpose and process of defining specific characters in the General Punctuation block: