U+00AD
SOFT HYPHEN

Invisible hyphenation hint; shows up only when a line breaks there.

Codepoint

U+00AD

Short

SHY

Group

soft-hyphen

Class

context-dependent

Default

removed

Replaced by

removed, no substitute

What it is

An invisible hint that says a hyphen may be drawn here if the line has to break. When the line does not break there, nothing is shown at all.

Where it comes from

From word processors and typesetting systems that hyphenate automatically, from PDF text pulled back into plain text, and from web pages that mark up their own break points.

When it belongs

Wherever the hyphenation was deliberate and the text will be laid out again. In a plain-text file that will never be justified, it is dead weight that breaks search: a word carrying one will not match the same word typed normally.

What TraceFree PRO does with it

Context guards can only ever make a cleanup gentler, never sharper. A rule saying “always remove” does not override them.

How to remove it

In TraceFree PRO, turn on the clipboard watcher and copy the text. On the command line:

tracefree clean --backup document.txt
pbpaste | tracefree clean | pbcopy

Report without changing anything — exit code 1 on findings, so it works in CI:

tracefree check -r ./docs

How to write it

This page never prints the character itself, only ways of writing it. A page about invisible characters that contained invisible characters would be unreviewable — and that is the problem the program exists to solve.

Try it on your own text

Paste anything into the browser demo and see what is in it. Same engine as the app, running entirely on your device — nothing is uploaded.

Try it