punctuation - Is it ever correct to have a space before a question or exclamation mark?


In written English (mainly online) I often come across sentences ending with a question or an exclamation mark with a space before it. Is it always just an error or a typo? Or there are cases when it is a correct English, for example after closing parentheses or some other punctuation marks?



Answer



In English, it is always an error. There should be no space between a sentence and its ending punctuation, whether that's a period, a question mark, or an exclamation mark. There should also be no space before a colon, semicolon, or comma. The only ending punctuation mark that sometimes needs to be preceded by a space is a dash.


I see this error most often with people who never really learned to type. In handwriting, spacing is more, um, negotiable and subject to interpretation.


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