Spacing with punctuation

DO NOT use spaces before punctuation marks like a full stop, question mark, exclamation mark, colon, semicolon, comma; DO NOT use spaces after the opening quotation marks and opening parenthesis and before the closing quotation marks and closing parenthesis. Both in English and in Polish it is always an error. With this unnecessary extra space you may end up with the punctuation mark at the beginning of a line.

Use no spaces on either side of a hyphen, for example:

• • red-nosed reindeer

In English there are no strict rules concerning the use of spaces around dashes inside a sentence, you may either add them or leave them out, but remember to be consistent. In Polish you should always use spaces on both sides of the dash inside a sentence.

When the en dash is used to indicate a range of values or to join two words that are separate but related (see the webpage on hyphens and dashes) – no spaces are used around the dash both in English and in Polish. For example:

• • w latach 2013–2017

  • exhibits A–F

  • work–life balance

When writing on a computer use only one space after concluding punctuation marks. This is the standard today, although you may find texts where double spacing is used at the end of a sentence.

For more information about spacing in Polish see: Wolański 2008 pp. 60–63