Re: [Lingo] spaces in japanese writing

["Stephen J. Turnbull" <stephen@example.com>]

steven smith writes:

 > That's what I thought and I was really surprised to hear my
 > tutor say they use spaces.  She's a young woman (25 I think
 > but who can tell, has two really cute young kids) and quite
 > well educated.  And she was quite emphatic.

I've never seen it except in children's books, and in manga, for
different reasons I suppose (although one often wonders at the
linguistic competence -- or whatever -- of readers and writers of
certain manga...).

They're also used for justification in tables, and often to separate
the family and given names in registries.  (By justification in
tables, I mean:

COLUMN    COLUMN
O N E     T W O

and suchlike.)

 > Could this be something that is in flux at the moment?  I
 > expect not or both of you would have mentioned it.

Not that I know of for Japanese per se.  In Japanese formal
typography, spaces are used around words written in foreign character
sets (eg, romaji).  These are thin spaces, not full spaces, and in my
experience most Japanese omit them in typing, while many gaijin use a
full space (since thin spaces aren't easily available in general).

Korean does use spaces, though.