Right-to-Left Isolate

Right-to-Left Isolate at U+2067 is an invisible bidirectional formatting character that starts a right-to-left text segment while keeping its direction effects contained. It belongs to the General Punctuation block and is used by the Unicode Bidirectional Algorithm rather than displayed as a visible mark. People insert it mainly in mixed-direction text, such as an English sentence containing an Arabic or Hebrew phrase whose surrounding punctuation must not be pulled into the wrong order. The isolated run continues until a matching Pop Directional Isolate, so a right-to-left name, title, or quoted phrase can appear correctly inside left-to-right text without disturbing what comes after it. It is especially relevant in multilingual publishing systems, messaging apps, databases, and user-interface strings that combine left-to-right labels with right-to-left user content. Developers and localization teams may use it to make examples like “User: [Arabic name]” display predictably when punctuation, numbers, or parentheses are nearby. The main practical gotcha is that it is invisible: if copied accidentally or left unmatched, it can make text order look confusing while the characters themselves seem normal. Search, selection, and debugging tools may reveal it only as a hidden formatting character.