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In French, no space before a comma or a period (unless want to explicitly communicate your disdain for computery things or you’re above 60) but we do put a space before : ? !

Example: « Pas de palais : pas de palais ! »

(^Quote from the Asterix movie that will be way more useful to you for making French friends in a bar than saying « I can’t speak French » in French)

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This is actually a really interesting example of the "space before punctuation" thing rather than " space before punctuation ".

Also: it looks like we're using colons differently, is that right?

We use colons for the same reason as in English, but there is a space before colons in French (Microsoft Word inserts it automatically for you in French), and no uppercase after the colon.

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