Space (punctuation)
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apostrophe ( ' ) ( ’ ) |
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ampersand ( & ) |
A space is a punctuation convention for providing interword separation in some scripts, including the Latin, Greek, Cyrillic, and Arabic. In computers, a space is represented by a space character.
Not all languages use spaces between words; the ancient Latin and Greek did not. Spaces were not used to separate words until roughly 600–800 AD. (See interword separation for more on the history.) Traditionally, all CJK languages have no space: modern Chinese and Japanese (except when written with little or no kanji) still do not, but modern Korean uses spaces.
For use of spaces after full stops, exclamation marks, and question marks, see discussion in the article Full stop.de:Leerzeichen eo:Spaceto (interpunkcio) fr:Espace typographique pl:Spacja