No space between the last word of a sentence and the question mark in English.

I wouldn't be so sure, if I were you : http://books.google.fr/books?id...ickens&f=false

So, let me summarise the situation :

You allege something without producing any reference or evidence of your allegations.

I provide evidence of the contrary (book from Harvard public library, published in Boston. I could have chosen thousands of other examples...)

And I am the one to "love controversial things" !

How funny !

I would suggest you use a non-breaking space instead of a regular one (Why should I know about your sexual orientation ? Do you know about mine ?), because currently your sentence displays incorrectly for me:

http://www.imageup.ru/img297/19...ce-3596218.png

I believe even in cases when the space is used before punctuation, the punctuation mark is never moved to the next line (I’ve seen a question marks moved to next line only in Chinese texts so far).

Hm... Althoug the NBSP doesn't seem to work either. :(

>Althoug the NBSP doesn't seem to work either. :(

Yep. That's why I don't use them.
It's a problem I've raised years ago already : non-breaking spaces depend on character sets and those used as default by Tatoeba either don't include them (they sometimes appear as squares) or they don't work...

It's actually a complex problem because the visual result is a combination of what the website enables and defaults, what your browser enables and defaults and what specific settings you set on your browser. So not everybody sees the same result.

@sacredceltic

Evidence?

Have a look in any English newspaper and you will see there is no space before exclamation or question marks.
Personally I like using the space for effect in comments, and I have done so. But not in sentences that go into the corpus.

In fact I have learned through Tatoeba and to my surprise that French is seemingly the exception: http://tatoeba.org/deu/sentences/show/3269580
I translated that sentence from the Dutch.

>Have a look in any English newspaper

That's a different allegation then...
Your initial one was : "No space between the last word of a sentence and the question mark in English."

That's the one I was debating, rightly.

>French is seemingly the exception

Wrong ! Many other languages do the same at present: Romanian, Hungarian, Italian...and even English in Mauritius and parts of India (I even once produced evidence from an Indian newspaper). Even German had the spaces (just open an old Grimm's brothers grammar book if you're in doubt. They're available on Google Books and you can clearly see the spaces !)

There is actually no rule that states that theses spaces should go. Or I defy you to show it (actually, I have had this debate already several times with CK, who never produced such evidence, which he would be too happy to produce if it existed...)

The - bad - habit of removing these spaces dates back from the arrival of typewriters, since it gained time to remove them. Then this lazy habit was continued by bad word-processing softwares and users.
It is actually not justified anymore, since word-processors can insert them automatically (Tatoeba doesn't, even in French, though...)
Not having the spaces is actually an impediment to reading, especially for people who learned reading in old books and learned to clearly see whether the sentence they were reading was a question, beforehand.
I can't see why we can't read anymore the way we used old books. Who decreed that ? On what ground ?

>English does not have a space before question marks

I provided evidence to the contrary. See above.

Repeating hearsay doesn't make it true.

But isn't this punctuation-with-spaces style regional and/or dated then? (thinking of tags) Certainly no longer mainstream, is it?

>But isn't this punctuation-with-spaces style regional and/or dated then?

That's not the question.

Whether it's English is the original question.
Dickens and his Boston publisher tended to agree with me.

So what is "English" according to the accusation ??

If Dickens and Boston are not, then what is ?

Let's not confuse questions, otherwise this will get messy.

Shouldn't we be a bit more trustful to what native speakers say about their language?

>Shouldn't we be a bit more trustful to what native speakers say about their language?

If you ask most French, they'd allege that « les haricots » is pronounced : lézaricots, which is plain wrong...

The majority doesn't rule, when it comes to language.

We should be trustful toward evidence. I was the only one to provide it so far.

As for English, I'm sorry but I trust more Dickens than you, how many of you there might be.

>Shouldn't we be a bit more trustful to what native speakers say about their language?

And you have questioned my skills in French several times, although I'm native and you're not...remember ?

>Shouldn't we be a bit more trustful to what native speakers say about their language?

http://tatoeba.org/fre/sentences/show/2024265

I was just sayin' this should probably be tagged so that nobody could possibly be confused about the general practice.

All right, Cedric, you have a point.

I have looked at Shakespeare's First Folio facsimile and it has indeed spaces before question marks and colons and things.

Since Shakespeare we have come a long way, and in English and I dare say most languages that space no longer exists for typographical or other reasons, which you explained earlier.

Modern Shakespeare editions no longer use the space. View the transcribed First Folio beginning of Julius Ceasar: http://internetshakespeare.uvic...JC/F1/default/

Bottom line? (a) You can remove the space OR (b) use a tag such as "historic punctuation" as Ooneykcall seems to suggest.

Personally I'd prefer (a). What do you think?

>I have looked at Shakespeare's First Folio facsimile and it has indeed spaces before question marks and colons and things.

So even Shakespeare is on my side, it seems ! That's a fifth of the English language ! I'm extremely honoured.

>Modern Shakespeare editions no longer use the space. View the transcribed First Folio beginning of Julius Ceasar: http://internetshakespeare.uvic...JC/F1/default/

That's the publisher's ungrounded and annoying present - and probably transitory, who knows ? - choices. Nothing to do with me.
Because present day publishers don't care for the reading comfort of their customers doesn't mean people are forced to do likewise. English is not prescriptive, and any attempt at making it so was always derided.

http://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Question_mark : "Some English books do have these spaces, but are often a very thin space, which are not full spaces but an attempt to make the words easier to read."

Same as in French.

I think the more readable, the better, especially since I'm getting older and my eyesight is getting impaired

Now, it's funny how people develop such a strong gut-reaction against a practice which was normality to their own grand-parents (although these same people have forgotten it, or never knew it because they never bothered to open their own grand-parents books...). Curious, no ? Especially since these spaces are really useful, and actually make reading easier.
I call it conservatism (and it is a paradox, here, because you would think conservatism consists in cherishing your heritage...).
It proves, once again, that it is very difficult to make people think out of their box and out of their misconceived certitudes.

I encourage you to read this interesting article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Co...misconceptions
"Perceived usage and grammar violations elicit visceral reactions in many people...But not all commonly held usage violations are errors"

This still needs some sort of tag, I believe.

#3804561

@raggione

the notion of "correctness", as I argued here, is highly debatable : why should you consider incorrect something your own grand-father would have considered perfectly correct ?
Spaces before question marks, disappeared, for a SHORT period of time, relative to the history of typography, and for obsolete reasons : gaining spaces and time with typewriters (they don't exist anymore...)
Again, please make the effort to question your deep conservative "certitudes" that have actually more to do with gut-rejection !