Parenthesis anguish

[Nunoftheother]

Yes, I am indubitably unreasonable because:

a) This issue is about as inconsequential as it's possible to be and;
b) It should probably be in Pedants' Corner.

But why, why, why do people keep typing a space after the first bracket of a parenthesis? I see it on here at least 50% of the time brackets are used. It's serves no purpose, makes the whole parenthesis look uneven and often leaves orphaned open-bracket symbols forlornly marooned at the end of a line of text. Above all, it's just wrong in every way.

Why have people decided this is de rigueur all of a sudden? Or is it an unfortunate effect of autocorrect?

And, parenthetically, I get just as upset about spaces being left before question marks and exclamation marks. Why ???!!!

My DS16 also shouts 'ly' at the screen. I am very proud of his fight for adverbs.

@LemonRedwood

Comma splices are another pet peeve.

I know and yet I’m a bugger for using them.

@Stinkywizzleteets

When I’m being paid to write, you’ll get proper grammar, punctuation and proof reading. When I’m bumping gums on an anon forum, I’ll be as lazy as I want about all of the above. People tend to write in a way that reflects their speech so while written ellipses have specific meaning and form, in modern day use it tends to indicate long breath or pause. I can’t say it winds me up as much as people using lol as punctuation.

Also worth noting autocorrect occasionally puts in spaces where they’re not warranted.

I suppose the thing is that "as lazy as I want" can range from what you have just written (clear sentences, paragraphs, commas, no spelling mistakes, correct form of "they're") to a near-incomprehensible word salad with huge run-on sentences, no punctuation and the substitution of non-words like "non" and "que" instead of "none" and "queue".

It's generally still possible to work out the intended meaning, but it takes a hell of a lot more effort on the part of the reader.

@CharlieParley - Thank you! That was both useful and very interesting.

@LemonRedwood, thanks for the explanation, makes sense.

There is one reason and only one to use a space before punctuation - where you are pasting a web URL (okay, or a URI if you want to be picky). Far too many people put punctuation after URLs then they wonder why the URL doesn't work. Duh, you changed the URL.