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Why do you put spaces before punctuation?

This is off-topic but I think I can help.

Some languages, like (European) French, put spaces before question marks[0] and exclamation marks[1] and people might be so used to doing it that they even do it when writing in a different language.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Question_mark#Stylistic_varian...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exclamation_mark#French

Indeed. Thanks _Microft :-) As you you might have guessed English is not my native language.

The answer was good, but just to clarify a touch more... The software inserts the space, not the French speaker. I teach in a university in France and repeatedly instructed students to stop typing that space until a few told me they literally can't unless they switch languages in Word.

The Grammaire Française recommends:

"Toujours un espace avant et après: le point-virgule, le point d'interrogation, le point d'exclamation et les deux points."

https://grammaire.reverso.net/les-espaces-et-la-ponctuation/

But for French Canadian variations the indication is just a "smaller" space.

If it had not been for these clues, I actually would not have noticed.

Interesting thanks, I've never seen that before.

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