Either it is "customary" or "outdated," you decide!
In general, put one space after punctuation.
In general, put no spaces before punctuation, but always put a space between words.
Exceptions.
Put two spaces after colons and between sentences.
Put no spaces after periods inside abbreviations.
Put no space before or after an apostrophe.
Put no space on the "inside" of quotation marks (often called "quotes").
Put no space on the "inside" of parentheses.
In general, put end-of-sentence punctuation inside quotation marks.
Note: Direct quotations are not used as much in English as in Japanese.
In general, put commas and other sentence punctuation outside of parentheses.
Put a comma (plus a space) before and, but, or, and nor when they join two sentences.
In general, if you use an adjective-plus-noun (or adverb-adjective) phrase to modify another noun the adjective and noun should be joined with a hyphen.
The semicolon (
is not used widely in English and probably should be avoided by non-native writers.
Names of newspapers, books, movies, ships, magazines, journals, and poems are usually italicized or underlined.
Ellipsis (...) is used to show that something has been omitted.
For quotes within quotes, use single quotes.
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Hmmm, I use the semi-colon a lot!
