Editing Quotation marks in English (section)

=== Spacing ===
In English, when a quotation follows other writing on a line of text, a space precedes the opening quotation mark unless the preceding symbol, such as an [[em dash]], requires that there be no space. When a quotation is followed by other writing on a line of text, a space follows the closing quotation mark unless it is immediately followed by other punctuation within the sentence, such as a colon or closing punctuation. (These exceptions are ignored by some Asian computer systems that systematically display quotation marks with the included spacing, as this spacing is part of the fixed-width characters.)

There is generally no space between an opening quotation mark and the following word, or a closing quotation mark and the preceding word. When a double quotation mark or a single quotation mark immediately follows the other, proper spacing for legibility may suggest that a [[thin space]] (<code>&amp;thinsp;</code>) or larger [[non-breaking space]] (<code>&amp;nbsp;</code>) be inserted.
{{block indent|1=<poem>
So Dave actually said, "He said, 'Good morning'&thinsp;"? (thin-space)
Yes, he did say, "He said, 'Good morning.'&nbsp;" (non-breaking space)
</poem>}}

This is not common practice in mainstream publishing, which will generally use more precise [[kerning]]. It is more common in online writing, although using [[Cascading Style Sheets|CSS]] to create the spacing by kerning is more [[Semantic HTML|semantically appropriate in Web typography]] than inserting extraneous spacing characters.