Spaces before

[Paranormalblue]

Wow I didn’t know this topic even existed on Mumsnet! I’m sure this has been said before but does anyone else get really annoyed when people put a space before a question mark or explamation point? It seriously winds me up and most people I speak to do this. Why is it now a thing?

@Paranormalblue I don’t see it often, but it is annoying!
One thing I do space incorrectly is the em dash — which looks right to me this way — as I can’t bear seeing it without spaces.

Yeah I do this too!

I’ve noticed others putting spaces before commas and full stops, too. I remember years ago watching Catfish and the presenter mentioned the spacing before question marks being a predominantly female thing to do. Maybe it was a thing in the US and now it’s become a thing over here. Now that I’ve noticed it, I see it everywhere and I have no idea why it annoys me so much!

It's apparently standard in for example French. So I'd suggest just pretending the person writing went to school in France and then it probably won't be as bothersome. :) Am not being snarky, for me that genuinely helps.

(so if anyone has a life hack for not being annoyed by xxx:s at the end of a post please let me know, because just thinking oh they're English isn't cutting it )

Haha I’ll give it a go. Do you mean you get annoyed when people put kisses (xxx) on the end of their posts? Because this too confuses me!

I know I shouldn’t, but I prefer much a hyphen (just an n-dash) with spaces to the m-dash, whether spaced correctly or not.

A space before and after / are a pet hate.
For example, and / or instead of and/or.

British English doesn’t use em dashes. We use spaced en dashes – like this.

The only time you’d use an em dash is to show interrupted speech: ‘He want—’

Hyphens - and en dashes – are not the same thing. They look different and they have different functions. British English uses spaced en dashes.

The autocorrect does this usually. It puts a space behind the word.

I think it’s when people edit and forget to remove the space.

That's as maybe, but there is only one of them on my keyboard. The key is multi-purpose as far as I'm concerned. Heck, I even use it in calculations.

True.

You get an en rule by clicking on Ctrl+minus, and you get an em by clicking on Ctrl+Alt+minus.

Thank you. I'm afraid I just use the hyphen, spaced or not, for everything. I don't bother working out the quirks of different keyboards. If I specifically need an en or em, I search for text with it in and copy-and-paste it.

Thanks, if only I could be arsed to do that!

😂

Exactly ;) looks so stupid on a forum so annoys me immensely! If I got texts peppered with xxx I’d be annoyed too but I’m culturally not in that loop😌