Note 104 – Spaces before punctuation marks

I’m not in the habit of putting spaces before an exclamation mark, question mark, colon or semicolon, but I have seen others do it in emails and other typed pieces of work. My work colleague asked me to blog about this as it’s one of his pet hates!

Here are a few examples of the wrong way of doing things:

• Look at me when I am talking to you !
• Do you want beans with your jacket potato ?
• It’s half past eight ; please can you go to bed.
• I would like the following : grey box files, A4 paper and a hole punch.

Do any of them make you cringe? If you are stuggling to see what is wrong, I have included the correctly punctuated sentences at the end of this post.

I have also found a link to a site called Learn English that explains about different punctuation marks and confirms how important the right spacing is. http://www.learnenglish.de/grammar/punctuationtext.htm.

That’s it for today. Don’t forget that you can subscribe to receive my daily blogs by email so that you don’t miss any. Just click ‘sign me up’ on the home page.

Until tomorrow…

Sandra

This blog: https://mywritingnotebook.wordpress.com

My other blog: http://sandramadeira.wordpress.com

My website: www.tipsandluxuries.com (includes the introduction to my upcoming book ‘A Gift for Stressed and Busy Parents’)

Twitter: @madeirasandra and @tipsandluxuries

Reference list:

Learn English site: http://www.learnenglish.de/grammar/punctuationtext.htm

Correctly punctuated sentences:

• Look at me when I am talking to you!
• Do you want beans with your jacket potato?
• It’s half past eight; please can you go to bed.
• I would like the following: grey box files, A4 paper and a hole punch.