this post was submitted on 06 Jun 2025
31 points (91.9% liked)

No Stupid Questions

41345 readers
1401 users here now

No such thing. Ask away!

!nostupidquestions is a community dedicated to being helpful and answering each others' questions on various topics.

The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:

Rules (interactive)


Rule 1- All posts must be legitimate questions. All post titles must include a question.

All posts must be legitimate questions, and all post titles must include a question. Questions that are joke or trolling questions, memes, song lyrics as title, etc. are not allowed here. See Rule 6 for all exceptions.



Rule 2- Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material.

Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material. You will be warned first, banned second.



Rule 3- Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here.

Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here. Breaking this rule will not get you or your post removed, but it will put you at risk, and possibly in danger.



Rule 4- No self promotion or upvote-farming of any kind.

That's it.



Rule 5- No baiting or sealioning or promoting an agenda.

Questions which, instead of being of an innocuous nature, are specifically intended (based on reports and in the opinion of our crack moderation team) to bait users into ideological wars on charged political topics will be removed and the authors warned - or banned - depending on severity.



Rule 6- Regarding META posts and joke questions.

Provided it is about the community itself, you may post non-question posts using the [META] tag on your post title.

On fridays, you are allowed to post meme and troll questions, on the condition that it's in text format only, and conforms with our other rules. These posts MUST include the [NSQ Friday] tag in their title.

If you post a serious question on friday and are looking only for legitimate answers, then please include the [Serious] tag on your post. Irrelevant replies will then be removed by moderators.



Rule 7- You can't intentionally annoy, mock, or harass other members.

If you intentionally annoy, mock, harass, or discriminate against any individual member, you will be removed.

Likewise, if you are a member, sympathiser or a resemblant of a movement that is known to largely hate, mock, discriminate against, and/or want to take lives of a group of people, and you were provably vocal about your hate, then you will be banned on sight.



Rule 8- All comments should try to stay relevant to their parent content.



Rule 9- Reposts from other platforms are not allowed.

Let everyone have their own content.



Rule 10- Majority of bots aren't allowed to participate here. This includes using AI responses and summaries.



Credits

Our breathtaking icon was bestowed upon us by @Cevilia!

The greatest banner of all time: by @TheOneWithTheHair!

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

i fixed the question. for people who do so, is it because your native language does so, like french? or is it because of stylistic choice?

like “hello ! how are you ?” i know a polish speaker who does that

all 38 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] psoul@lemmy.world 27 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (2 children)

It is the orthographic norm for some languages, i.e. the only correct way to spell.

French is like that. Any double punctuation symbol gets a space beforehand.

Ah bon ? Mais il fait pourtant beau aujourd’hui !

Écoute ça : Thomas entre dans le magasin ; il en ressort avec, entre autre, un cadeau.

[–] jaiden@sh.itjust.works 4 points 2 days ago (1 children)

that makes sense, it’s why i wonder if most people who do that are french speakers

[–] schnurrito@discuss.tchncs.de 3 points 2 days ago

Many probably are, I don't know about "most". There are plenty of people who just don't know proper typography without that having this kind of explanation.

[–] Obi@sopuli.xyz 3 points 2 days ago

I think the point virgule depends if you're from France or Québec. I learned it with no space before it and seems this table confirms that. This similar one from a Quebec source seems to be saying you can do either.

[–] Proprietary_Blend@lemmy.world 15 points 2 days ago (2 children)

Maybe for the same reason so many people do not capitalize the first word in their sentences.

[–] lurch@sh.itjust.works 4 points 2 days ago

i do this when writing in a hurry on my phone

[–] starlinguk@lemmy.world 9 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (2 children)

And some people don't use a space at all!They type like this.Argh.

Or they use commas instead of full stops for ellipses,,,

[–] jaiden@sh.itjust.works 3 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

oh my gosh, i’ve seen that!! i wonder why 🤔

[–] cheers_queers@lemm.ee 3 points 2 days ago

I have fought the urge to do that many times. For me, it feels a bit softer than the ellipses. But i try to restrain myself lol

[–] aramis87@fedia.io 0 points 2 days ago

Apparently there was some school of teaching for a while, where the teachers were emphasizing getting your ideas down on paper quickly, without regard for spelling, spacing, paragraph-ing, punctuation, verb tense, etc. I ran across it when I was trying to find out why there was this generation of fanfic writers who had interesting concepts but couldn't write to any kind of standard - and who were extremely resistant to any suggestions. Some of the concepts sounded really interesting, too, but it was entirely too much work to try to parse the story.

[–] unknown1234_5@kbin.earth 7 points 2 days ago

second language or typo

[–] AbouBenAdhem@lemmy.world 6 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

It was the standard English printed style in the US and UK from the 1860s until the early 20th century, gradually phasing out by the 1950s.

For printers with variable spaces, it was typical to use a hair space before the punctuation and an em space after.

For more details, see this article on the history of sentence spacing.

[–] J52@lemmy.nz 4 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Stylistic choice to make it more visible (in most cases).

[–] mediOchre@sh.itjust.works 4 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Stylistic choice to make it more visible ( in most cases ) .

FTFY

[–] J52@lemmy.nz 1 points 17 hours ago

Just yell!!!

[–] aramis87@fedia.io 5 points 2 days ago

When texting (ie, fast reading and writing), I'll occasionally do it for legibility when using exclamation points, when the sentence I'm writing ends in too many thin, upright letters. Like in a text, I think I will !

reads faster than I will!

[–] daggermoon@lemmy.world 4 points 2 days ago

English isn't their first language usually

[–] lurch@sh.itjust.works 3 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

i do this when the word(s) before the punctuation should be easy to copy+paste, like "did you install figlet ?" so they don't accidentally get the question mark into the copied text

[–] cmeio@lemmy.world 3 points 2 days ago (1 children)

The rules of where to make spaces variate in different languages, so maybe some people do as they learned in their native language.

[–] FelixCress@lemmy.world 3 points 2 days ago (2 children)

Good question, does anyone know ?

[–] AmidFuror@fedia.io 3 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Your joke was not detected by everyone. Not taken as a joke, the comment is useless !

[–] FelixCress@lemmy.world 2 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Your joke was not detected by everyone.

I noticed !

[–] jaiden@sh.itjust.works 1 points 2 days ago

i notice, sorry to not respond ! i have no idea why people type that way ? 🤔

[–] 6nk06@sh.itjust.works 2 points 2 days ago (2 children)

Smartphone keyboards are multilingual now. I can set it to French and autocorrect in English. But if there's a bug, it may be confused I guess.

[–] jaiden@sh.itjust.works 1 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

mine autocorrects to german sometimes. I don’t even speak german

[–] palordrolap@fedia.io 2 points 2 days ago

Unglaublich !

[–] Acamon@lemmy.world 3 points 2 days ago (1 children)

For me, it's that my keyboard sometimes autocorrects to French.

[–] MrJameGumb@lemmy.world 2 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I have never seen anyone put a space before a question mark! I'm curious to find out now too lol

[–] moonlight@fedia.io 1 points 2 days ago

i think it's common with younger generations, especially when texting !!

[–] brokenlcd@feddit.it 2 points 2 days ago (1 children)

The reason i sometimes do it is because my brain sees a typed word as ending with a space in principle. Even if it the only word i'm typing. I doubt i managed to make sense, but anyways.

[–] jaiden@sh.itjust.works 1 points 2 days ago

i think i get it, thanks!

[–] sem@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 points 2 days ago

I only do it when my thumb accidentally hits spacebar instead of the period button right next to it, and I don't care enough to go back and fix it.

[–] 6nk06@sh.itjust.works 1 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Not stylistic, it's the language.

[–] jaiden@sh.itjust.works 2 points 2 days ago

I don’t mean french, i mean in english