noncharacter

English

Etymology

non- +‎ character

Noun

noncharacter (plural noncharacters)

1. (computing) That which is not a character (unit of text).
   1. (Unicode) One of 66 code points (the 32 code points U+FDD0–U+FDEF, plus the last two code points—U+...FFFE and U+...FFFF—of each of the 17 planes) which are guaranteed never to be assigned and are intended for process-internal use.
2. That which is not a character, as in literature.
   • 2009, Marc Robinson, The American Play: 1787-2000, page 325:

     Like the noncharacter at the center of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? the screen's nonimage and the man it effaces enable other forms of repression, […]