To space before a bracket or not to space?

[Geoff Hart <ghart -at- videotron -dot- ca>]

Sameh Saeb wondered: <<A friend of mine who writes for a teen magazine 
has run into a problem concerning whether to leave a space before and 
after brackets or not. The editor requires her to not leave a space 
before and after the brackets, basing her (The Editor) conviction to 
some mystery style book.>>

If you mean that there should be no space before "(Editor" or after 
"Editor)" in your message text, the editor is wrong. I've read more 
widely than most, and have never seen that style. One good solution in 
matters of style is to ask the editor in question to name the style 
guide in which this rule is proposed. ("I'd like to study the style 
guide you're using so I can do a better job of following it.") If they 
can't produce the style guide, ask them to provide an example in any 
published work. This usually resolves the problem.

But I think Dick was correct in his response: The editor probably means 
that you shouldn't pad the words inside the brackets with extra spaces, 
such as (  Editor  ). This may be a typographic glitch (poorly designed 
fonts) rather than actual extra spaces or more interestingly, it may be 
a problem with software such as MS Office, which occasionally 
accumulates bizarre "autoformat" features. For example, many versions 
of Powerpoint automatically insert a space after a single quote (') so 
that "don't" becomes "don' t". This one used to drive me nuts in 
presentations produced by authors using the French installation.

--Geoff Hart   ghart -at- videotron -dot- ca
(try geoffhart -at- mac -dot- com if you don't get a reply)


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