A comma on top of a colon created a semi-colon and would require the typewriter carriage to create a space before and after. The punctuation symbols that require extra spaces in French were typed by superimposing two to three symbols on top of each other. It is there to avoid an isolated word or punctuation mark on the next line which could impact the fluidity of reading.Ī likely reason for French punctuation requiring an extra space dates to the use of typewriters. It is a space character that prevents an automatic line break at its position. In old-school French grammar, the space between the two-part punctuation marks is called une éspace insécable, or a non-breaking space. « Ce n’est pas possible ! » – “That’s impossible !”.This rule does not apply to Canadian French.Īll punctuation marks composed of two or more parts require a space before and after in French: question mark, exclamation mark, semicolon, colon, French quotation marks, percentage mark, hash mark, and currency symbols:Īll of these symbols have multiple parts to them and can be referred to as double punctuation marks. The most noticeable difference between French and English punctuation is the mysterious French space before two-part punctuation marks. French punctuation marks and the mysterious extra spaces Now that you recognize the most important French punctuation marks, let’s discover their most common uses and differences between French and English. French punctuation marks: symbols and namesīefore we dive into the similarities and differences in French and English punctuation, let’s just see a list of the different punctuation marks in French along with their names in both languages. In particular, we’ll go over the different quotation marks used in French, we’ll see the variations in the use of em dashes and hyphens, and we’ll learn the different uses of periods, commas, and colons in contexts such as how numbers and time are written, and how titles are abbreviated.īy the end of this post, you will have gotten a complete overview of the similarities and differences between punctuation marks in French vs English, allowing you to read and write more accurately. Then we’ll go over every punctuation mark in French, one by one, explaining their uses with examples, and comparing them with how they’re used in English. In this post, we’ll answer the age-old question: why do the French put a space before punctuation marks? We will determine which punctuation marks require this extra space, and discuss potential reasons why. Unfortunately, the assumption that punctuation is the same in both languages only holds true for a handful of French punctuation marks. At first glance, French punctuation appears similar to English.
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