Character spacing in Japanese and English: Image: Poligo

Space is used in different ways in English and Japanese. Each character in Japanese fills the same square of space — this is clear from the use of 原稿用紙. When you use punctuation in Japanese, like a 句点 ("period" or "full stop") or 読点 ("comma"), the space after is included in the space for the character. However, the space used by each character in English changes.

Look at the picture of English and Japanese. Japanese characters fill one square. 「漢字」 fill the same space as 「かな」 and punctuation marks like 「。」.

English letters fill different amounts of space. Letters in English can be thin or fat. A word like "ill" is made up of skinny letters. It takes up the same space as just the letter "m". Punctuation marks can also be thin (!) or fat (?).

In English, a space is another kind of punctuation, like full stops, colons and commas. It helps us read and understand written English. Because of this different way of using space in writing, you need to learn how to use space in English.

There are three ways you can use space badly in English:

1. Not using enough space;
2. Using too much space; or
3. Using a crazy mix of not enough and then too much space.

Let's look at each case.

1. Not enough space

Sometimes, people don't use enough space. This makes it very hard to read and understand. The very worst case is when there is no space. Don't try to understand the English, just see if you can make out the words and look at the layout or design of the writing.

Itwasthebestoftimes,itwastheworstoftimes...

Impossible to read, but this is how Japanese is written — no spaces at all!

2. Too much space

Sometimes, people use too much space. It is easier to read than when there is not enough space, but it is still not great. Extra spaces are shown in red:

It  was the  best of times , it  was  the worst of times  . . .

3. A mix of too much and not enough space

Sometimes, people get confused. They mix using too much space and not enough. Again, we show the mistakes in red:

It was the bestof times , it was  the worst of times ...

When to use a space

There are rules for using a space in English.  Spaces are shown in red. In the right column, the mistake is shown.