That character is U+2028 Line Separator, which is a kind of newline character. Think of it as the Unicode equivalent of HTML’s <br>
.
As to why it shows up here: my guess would be that an internal database uses LSEP to not conflict with literal newlines or HTML tags (which might break the database or cause security errors), and either:
<br>
More information on the line separator, excerpted from the Unicode standard, Chapter 5.8, Newline Guidelines (on p. 12 of this PDF):
Line Separator and Paragraph Separator
A paragraph separator—independent of how it is encoded—is used to indicate a separation between paragraphs. A line separator indicates where a line break alone should occur, typically within a paragraph. For example:
This is a paragraph with a line separator at this point,
causing the word “causing” to appear on a different line, but not causing
the typical paragraph indentation, sentence breaking, line spacing, or
change in flush (right, center, or left paragraphs).For comparison, line separators basically correspond to HTML
<BR>
, and paragraph separators to older usage of HTML<P>
(modern HTML delimits paragraphs by enclosing them in<P>...</P>
). In word processors, paragraph separators are usually entered using a keyboardRETURN
orENTER
; line separators are usually entered using a modifiedRETURN
orENTER
, such asSHIFT-ENTER
.A record separator is used to separate records. For example, when exchanging tabular data, a common format is to tab-separate the cells and to use a
CRLF
at the end of a line of cells. This function is not precisely the same as line separation, but the same characters are often used.Traditionally,
NLF
started out as a line separator (and sometimes record separator). It is still used as a line separator in simple text editors such as program editors. As platforms and programs started to handle word processing with automatic line-wrap, these characters were reinterpreted to stand for paragraph separators. For example, even such simple programs as the Windows Notepad program and the Mac SimpleText program interpret their platform’sNLF
as a paragraph separator, not a line separator. OnceNLF
was reinterpreted to stand for a paragraph separator, in some cases another control character was pressed into service as a line separator. For example, vertical tabulation VT is used in Microsoft Word. However, the choice of character for line separator is even less standardized than the choice of character forNLF
. Many Internet protocols and a lot of existing text treatNLF
as a line separator, so an implementer cannot simply treatNLF
as a paragraph separator in all circumstances.
Further reading:
Unicode Technical Report #13: Newline Guidelines
General Punctuation (U+2000–U+206F) chart PDF
SE: Why are there so many spaces and line breaks in Unicode?
SO: What is unicode character 2028 (LS / Line Separator) used for?
U+2028 on codepoints.net A misprint here says that U+2028 was added in v. 1.1 of the Unicode standard, which is false — it was added in 1.0