Introduction
When an ordinary man looks at a printed document or a web page, he can call the spaces that do not have text or pictures, white space. These spaces are actually blank spaces; they do not have to be white in color.  On a computer screen, some of these spaces have characters and a programmer have to be conscious of which character creates a particular type of white space. The meaning of these characters and their particular type of white spaces are listed and explained in this article.

Type of Characters
The ordinary man considers, A, as a character, B, as another character, C, as another character, 5 as a character, 7 as character, and so on. On the computer keyboard, you see non-commonly used characters such as the asterisk, *. In most computer languages, a white space character consists of two items. It begins with a back slash followed by text. These two items effectively form the white space character. For example, \n, is a white space character for a good number of computer languages; the meaning will be given below. These two-item characters are better called Escape Sequences. They are also called Special Characters.

The Space
While typing in a word processor, when the computer user presses the spacebar of the keyboard, a space is created on the screen. In many computer languages, the escape sequence (space) for this space is, \u0020. The two items involved are the back slash and 0020.

The Horizontal Tab
While somebody is writing with a pen on a peace of paper, if he wants to start a new paragraph he does not start at the left margin; he shifts a bit to the right (indents). That indentation can be considered as a horizontal tab. There is an escape sequence that can be used to achieve this with many computer languages. It is, \t. It begins with a back slash, followed by ‘t’ in lower case. This special character is called the horizontal tab (i.e. \t).

The Vertical Tab
As the horizontal tab exists, a Vertical Tab in the vertical direction also exists. For many languages, the escape sequence for the vertical tab is ‘\v’. You have a back slash followed by ‘v’ in lower case.

Form Feed
A form feed is more of an instruction than a blank space character. It is called a white space character because it can cause a blank space. Imagine that there are about ten lines of text for a document. Also imagine that in the middle of this text, you have the escape sequence, \f, which is what many languages use as the form feed character. Now while the page that has this text is being printed (displayed), when the printer (or screen) reaches this escape sequence, it should not print the rest of the text below on the current page; it should advance the page, leaving a blank space and then starts printing the rest of the text on the next page (paper). Form Feed means: print the rest of the text on the next page, just after feeding in the next page (paper to the printer). If the printer meets this character at the end of the current page, then no blank space would be produced, as the rest of the text would be printed (or displayed) on the next page fed.

Line Terminators
Two escape sequences are described below as white space characters, but they do not really produce blank spaces. However, they affect where the next line of text would be printed or displayed.

The space, horizontal tab and vertical tab white space characters are by themselves blank spaces. The form feed character can produce a blank space depending on its position in the current page; in itself, it is more of an instruction than a blank space character. The two escape sequences below, are not blank characters by themselves. They are actually line terminators, but in many forums they are called, white space characters.

Carriage Return
Imagine that a line of text is to be displayed (printed) and there is the escape sequence, \r in the middle of the line of text. \r is known as the Carriage Return character for many languages. When the printer or screen reaches this point, it sends the ink (or light) to the beginning of the current line. After this, if printing were to continue, the current line will be written over, by the left half of the line of text. The carriage return escaped sequence is normally used in conjunction with the Newline escape sequence (see below).

The Newline
Imagine that a line of text is to be displayed and there is the escape sequence, \n in the middle of the line of text. \n is known as the Newline character for many languages. When the printer or screen reaches this point, it sends the ink (or light) to the next (to-be-displayed) line. It is not clear whether the ink should go to the beginning or middle or end of the next line. If the programmer wants printing to continue at the beginning of the next line, then he has to use both \r and \n together (i.e. \r\n) at the same point in the line of text. With some languages (compilers or interpreters), \n alone serves the purpose of the presence of both \r and \n.

Conclusion
The escape sequences for the white spaces are not displayed as \t, \f, etc. The user sees only their effects. The space, horizontal tab and vertical tabs characters can be considered as pure white space characters.  The form feed and especially the line terminators, can be considered as indirect white space characters.

Chrys