0
$\begingroup$

Paris is in France.London is in England.If Paris is in France,then London is in England.

A lack of space before continuing after a comma or a period is something I have rarely seen except when it's an inadvertent typo, except on math.stackexchange.com. If it occurs 30 times in one posting without a single instance of what I was brought up to consider the standard form, that's not a typo. If I look at 30 posted questions and eight of them follow that form, and if that happens every day for several years (and it has) then I wonder what's going on. Two guesses:

  • Some people use software to create MathJax code rather than doing it by hand, and it often writes code that looks like something a psychotic would write. Might it be that that same software is doing this?
  • Is there some country (e.g. maybe India?) where this is standard and where many of those who post here live?
$\endgroup$
2
  • $\begingroup$ The punctuation's rule in France is to make a space between the word and these marks ? ! : so for example in your question they write (in France) (e.g. maybe India ?) I think that every country has its rules. $\endgroup$
    – user66407
    Oct 3, 2015 at 14:31
  • $\begingroup$ I have a friend from India who said that he didn't know there were meant to be spaces after punctuation marks. Also my phone doesn't put spaces, so I will say it very well could be a combination of both factors. $\endgroup$
    – Oceans Bleed
    Oct 4, 2015 at 1:56

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
5
$\begingroup$

I have also seen posts spaced like this:

Paris is in France . London is in England.If Paris is in France ,then London is in England

Thus, I would not discard the possibility it is just a combination of carelessness, ignorance of the rules, and lack of appreciation for the relevance to get this right.

However, I do appreciate the fact that for somebody native in a language that is quite different from English (non-Latin alphabet, etc.) this might be harder, than for those native in English or at least in a language using the Latin alphabet.

While it is the case that even different languages using the Latin alphabet have slightly different rules (an example is given in the comments), I would not know of a classical rule where no space is to be used after a full-stop, neither does the Wikpedia page on the punctuation "space" given one.

Except there one can find the following quote:

According to Lynne Truss, "young people" today using digital media "are now accustomed to following a full stop with a lower-case letter and no space".

I take this as further evidence for the possibility mentioned above.

$\endgroup$
9
  • 2
    $\begingroup$ "If it's that wrong, why didn't autocorrect stop me?" Or, more likely: "muh autocorrect". $\endgroup$
    – Lord_Farin
    Oct 3, 2015 at 19:04
  • $\begingroup$ Well that last quote is from 2004, back in the days where you had to type out your whole SMS yourself. Nowadays autocorrect adds the space after the dot automatically. $\endgroup$
    – Najib Idrissi
    Oct 3, 2015 at 19:16
  • $\begingroup$ So... you're saying that we should be grateful for "London" and "Paris" instead of "london" and "paris"? $\endgroup$
    – Asaf Karagila Mod
    Oct 3, 2015 at 19:44
  • $\begingroup$ @Asaf what pairs are you longing for? $\endgroup$
    – quid Mod
    Oct 3, 2015 at 19:48
  • $\begingroup$ The ones I ordered. $\endgroup$
    – Asaf Karagila Mod
    Oct 3, 2015 at 19:49
  • $\begingroup$ @Asaf sorry, ordered pairs are out. $\endgroup$
    – quid Mod
    Oct 3, 2015 at 19:50
  • 1
    $\begingroup$ I can still long for them. I have few freedoms left, dammit! $\endgroup$
    – Asaf Karagila Mod
    Oct 3, 2015 at 19:51
  • $\begingroup$ I have a friend from India who said that he didn't know there were meant to be spaces after punctuation marks. Also my phone doesn't put spaces, so I will say it very well could be a combination of both factors. $\endgroup$
    – Oceans Bleed
    Oct 4, 2015 at 1:56
  • $\begingroup$ @OceansBleed that's interesting. But from my experience corresponding with a fair number of mathematicians from and/or in India, I can assure you that this is not at all universal. $\endgroup$
    – quid Mod
    Oct 4, 2015 at 12:52

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .