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Spacing before a period
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Comments
Please do not hesitate to contact us at noslangues.ourlanguages@tpsgc-pwgsc.gc.ca if you have any comments or suggestions about this feature.
Question:
Some people put a space before a period. Yet I was taught never to put a space between the end of a sentence and the final period. Has the rule changed?
Answer:
No, the rule has not changed. According to The Canadian Style, there is no space before a period. Why, then, do we sometimes see a space inserted?
There might be several reasons behind this deviation from the rule. Some people may be influenced by the French spacing rule that requires a non-breaking space before a colon:
- La banque d'articles traitent de plusieurs aspects de la langue française : anglicismes, grammaire, orthographe, ponctuation, style, vocabulaire.
Others may insert a space between a hyperlink and the final period in a sentence to keep the period out of the link:
- Check out the Language Portal of Canada Web site.
Or programs such as HTML editors (software programs used to produce the code for Internet Web sites) may accidentally insert an extra space or two at the end of sentences.
But you can rest easy knowing that what you were taught is still the norm: you should never put a space between the end of a sentence and the final period.
