Talk:Space (punctuation)

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Contents 1 Old talk 2 Japanese spaces 3 Let's choose a more appropriate title 4 History 5 Request for help 6 See also section

[edit] Old talk

It's not forbidden the space is a punctuation mark or a convention of letters positioning. It certainly is a non-trivial aspect of an orthography. Not all scripts have spaces for interword separation. The Latin script didn't have spaces until 900-something AD. I hope someone will explore these issues in the space (punctuation) article. (I've put these ideas there too.)

--jdlh

I think the space definitely counts as punctuation. Like other punctuation marks, it helps determine the flow of the text and the meaning of a word (just as it's and its have different meanings, so do light housekeeper and lighthouse keeper.) I don't think it's just a convention of letter positioning like kerning, alignment, or justification. - Montréalais

Also some compounds have gone from two words joined by a space to two words joined by a hyphen to one word. Ortolan88

side show > side-show > sideshow, for example. Ortolan88

See also A, an for examples of how the space moves around: a nuncle becoming an uncle and an eft becoming a newt. Ortolan88

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A space is definitely NOT punctuation. Spacing and punctuation are complementary ways to make meaning clearer, spacing being the more basic.

Dictionary.com:

• 1a) The use of standard marks and signs in writing and printing to separate words into sentences, clauses, and phrases in order to clarify meaning.
• 1b) The marks so used.
• 2) The act or an instance of punctuating.

COED 8th edn.:

• 1) the system or arrangement of marks used to punctuate a written passage.
• 2) the practice or skill of punctuating
• - punctuation mark: any of the marks (e.g. full stop and comma) used in writing to separate sentences and phrases, etc. and to clarify meaning.

Montrealais argument that a space must be punctuation because, like punctuation, "it helps determine the flow of the text and the meaning of a word", is bogus. Spacing and punctuation *both* help determine the flow of the text. The COED definition of punctuation mark assumes that the words have already been separated (by spaces). I'd be amazed if all style manuals didn't treat spacing and punctuation as separate topics.

Ortolan88's notes about formations like 'a nadder' are a matter of morphology. Every native speaker knows that the root form is 'adder'. But, as the spoken language has been written down, there's been some ambiguity about just where the word-morphing happens: either a -> an or adder -> nadder. In either case, they still end up as words on the page, separated by spaces. In context, they'll benefit from punctuation to make the meaning still clearer. They might benefit from italicizing too, but I guess nobody's calling that punctuation!

-- Hotlorp

Well, I guess you've convinced me - what would be a better title then - Space (orthography) seems clearer than Space (character) to me. Then the first sentence would become "A space is an orthographical device for providing interword separation..." Does that seem sensible? --Camembert

Not sure. Orthography seems to me to be about the word in isolation, not directly about the decisions about how to separate adjacent words, except in a few cases mentioned above ('side show' etc.). Orthography's worst problem is that it's horrible and nonintuitive to write.

How about 'spacing' or 'word space'? I prefer the latter. This can be an article on the computer character 0x20 as well as a history of word spaces in Latin, Arabic, etc., maybe talking about what is the right width for a space character, justification, etc., and its relation to morphology in the 'a nadder' examples. -- Hotlorp

Hang on, we already have interword separation. What's wrong with redirecting word space there, and simply make several sections if necessary? -- Hotlorp

IMO, nothing. As long it actually follows through and does that. Unlike, e.g., hair space. =p Kwantus 2005 June 28 14:17 (UTC)

Just let me add that the articles space (punctuation) and interword separation, as they are now, lead to a circular definition. They read in fact (emphasis mine):

I'm no expert in the problem domain. My intuition suggests that a space is not a "mark", nor that it belongs to "punctuation". I would reword the second sentence as:

Interword separation is the act and the effect of reciprocally separating the written representations of words. This can be achieved by either using blank spaces between them or using special symbols and conventions, depending on the language.

Note that the definition basically assumes "space" as a primitive concept, which I think is plausible (I don't remember my teacher explaining me what a "space" or "blank space" is). If you prefer we could use "empty zone" as a pseudo-definition of "blank space":

Interword separation is the act and the effect of reciprocally separating the written representations of words. This can be achieved by either using empty zones (blank spaces) between them or using special symbols and conventions, depending on the language.

As I said this is just what my intuition suggests. I would like to hear from a real expert if this is technically correct. --Gennaro Prota 13:53, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

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The Unicode standard claims a Medium Mathematical Space is "four eighteenths of an em wide", but that doesn't seem right: (a) that would make it only slightly wider than a six-per-em space, but in my browser it seems to be about the same size as an en space, and (b) it just seems weird that they'd say "four eighteenths" instead of "two ninths". Anybody know what's up with that? - Gwalla 02:29, 20 Jun 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Japanese spaces

"Traditionally, all CJK languages have no space: modern Chinese and Japanese still do not, but modern Korean uses space."

Actually, spaces are sometimes used in Japanese, especially when written with little or no kanji. When Japanese is written in kana, word boundaries are hard to identify. Naturally, this is done mostly in writing for children or students, which uses little kanji, but it's becoming more common. --WurdBendur 20:07, Feb 20, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Let's choose a more appropriate title

Hi guys,

though all this is waiting for attention from an expert, I think we all agree that a space is not a punctuation *mark*; thus the article title is inappropriate. What would be the best one?

• space (typography)
• space (writing)
• space (writing convention)

These are just off the top of my head; you are encouraged to suggest others :) --Gennaro Prota 23:19, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] History

The sentence "Spaces were not used to separate words until roughly 600 AD – 800 AD (see interword separation for more on the history)" is incorrect, and the section on interword separation contradicts it. For example, Hebrew and Arabic scripts had spaces long before 600 CE. If this sentence is meant to refer only to Latin and Greek (and their derivative) languages, this should be made explicit (or at least more clear).

[edit] Request for help

I have encountered a problem with non-breaking spaces at the Wikipedia Manual of Style. See here for a presentation of the difficulty, and a kludge solution. Has anyone got a better solution? Please post any suggestions at that location. – Noetica 02:10, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] See also section

I converted the "See also" section to a list to comply with Wikipedia:Guide_to_layout#See_also, and to remove redundant information that was accessible from other articles. This has since been reverted. Informational content should go in the article body, not the "See also" section. -- Beland 02:15, 7 February 2007 (UTC)