Space before punctuation

[LaPerduta]

I really want to put this in AIBU because I think it is highly U, but I'll probably get flamed, so ...

Could someone please explain why people keep leaving gaps before punctuation marks ? It happens with brackets ( like this ,sometimes causing the closing parenthesis to be on the wrong line completely ) and sometimes you get a list where the first item ,then the second item ,then the third all have this weird comma placement.

It's so annoying !

Is it an autocorrect thing, or do people actually think that's how punctuation should be typed ?

Someone I worked with changed all my copy to leave a gap before a question mark. I asked her why and she said that “it looked nicer”.

I had to change it all back before publishing.

How cheeky! You actually do this in French (and possibly also other languages) but I just don't understand why people take it upon themselves to punctuate in their own particular (wrong) way. I'm not talking about total absence of punctuation, or even erratic punctuation, but where there is obviously some weird, imaginary set of rules being followed.

Also obviously not referring to people like e e cummings or Bernadine Evaristo (think that's the right name).

Yes very cheeky. She said she knew it was wrong, but that she preferred her way. 🙄

I worked with a french company editing and publishing a document. Every time I closed the gap between a word and a punctuation mark (e.g. they wrote 'what ?', I changed to 'what?'), they changed it back as that was their style.
I don't even double space between sentences!

Aha! I knew someone who did this who was English but had a French relative. He had the benefit of an education from the top institutions so I presumed he was correct, though I never adopted it because no one else I knew, with very decent but normal educations, did this. So, is it pretentious to do this if you aren't French?

I believe that when using predictive text, the phone auto-inserts a “ “ after the word. So I’ve (perhaps generously) assumed that it’s the phone initially but then not corrected by the writer.

I have done it if the words before the punctuation are a link. I can't not use punctuation if its part of the sentence, but the punctuation destroys the link if attached.

Well it's definitely wrong! I guess it could also be a pretension.

That is totally sensible/logical and I'd do the same, but I don't think it explains most instances of this.

I see lots of spaces before and after a slash e.g. 'and / or', 'yes / no'.

I know I shouldn't double space after full stops but as someone who learnt to type (very badly) a million years ago my fingers have a mind of their own.

What I meant was that I often see instances of a space before and after a slash.

I was always told to double-space after full stops, but maybe I'm just od and out of touch. However, I'm unlikely to change, it's just muscle memory now. Will I be dragged off to the international court of typist fails?

Same here. I was taught to double space on a typewriter, and I can't help myself, even when typing with my thumbs on a phone.

At Pitman Secretarial College a million years ago I was most emphatically taught to put a double space after a full stop.

I was taught to double space by more experienced secretaries in an old job. I changed jobs and got told off for it as apparently it's old-fashioned. Now it depends how my fingers feel as to whether we double space or not 😁

Wait, what ? You shouldn't double space after a full stop ? I also learned at the altar of Pitman and it was absolutely drummed into us. When did this change ?

(see all those spaces before the question marks too)

We are all showing our ages 😂😂😂😂

When I first learned to bash away with two fingers on an ancient typewriter, it was two spaces after a full stop. But it fell out of fashion before I had to do a lot of typing (in the course of study) so the habit never became ingrained.

What hurts my eyes and sets my teeth on edge is wrongly punctuated dialogue in a novel:

"I might pop to Tesco after work today", said Joan.

I once read a novel by a well known author published by a reputable publisher in which the dialogue was like this throughout. I struggled to get through it. You'd think if you were writing a novel, or worked for a publisher, you might actually have read a novel and seen how dialogue should be punctuated?

Two spaces after a full stop is from typewriter times.

I'm now doing a little bit of proofreading as a job and the first thing I do with all documents is a Find/Replace for double spaces.

I also can't not do this.

@GrouchyKiwi , me too.

Just to be precise, you've put a question mark at the end of a statement there.

I do it because I think it looks better, and I don’t care what others think !

'sometimes you get a list where the first item ,then the second item ,then the third all have this weird comma placement.'

Yes! Aaargh. Turns online dating profiles into an instrument of torture.