Usage: Spaces in Chinese

Question

I asked a similar question about Japanese here.

• Chinese names are sometimes stylized last name + space + first name.

Here the author's name 马骥 is stylized, last name + space + first name:

马 骥

• Hanyu Da Cidian likes to throw spaces around proper nouns.

Here's a screenshot from Pleco

First and second spaces can been seen:

清 李光庭

(the second space is after 庭 and before《)

Third and fourth spaces:

唐 李益 詩

Are there any rules as to the usage of spaces in Chinese?

Answer 1

No space is needed when writing Chinese names.

Sometimes, spaces are added for better alignment only. To align 2-character and 3-character names, space may be added in between 2-character names. Example:

李　白
杜　甫
白居易
李　賀
陳子昂
王　勃
賀知章
王昌齡

Answer 2

For prettify and easier to recognize at first glance.

清 李光庭

清 means Qing dynasty, 李光庭 is a name.

唐 李益 詩

唐 means Tang dynasty, 李益 is a name and 詩 means poetry.

If no spaces between them, like 唐李益詩 will looks like a man named 李益詩 at Tang dynasty or even an idiom, because we can treat 益 as a verb, 唐李 and 詩 are nouns.

Answer 3

This is two cases, as your first figure, '李冀', it is a typography as other answers said.

But in tradition, people's name tend to have leading space, called '抬头'. It shows respect to the one.

As your second screenshot, it uses '抬头' obviously.

Or more accurately, it is '挪抬'. You simply add one-character space before people's name(or other words that addressed he. ).

All the '蒋总统' have a space before it. Look at the blue rectangle, these poor people '张学良' and '杨虎城' do not have, because they did bad things to '蒋总统'.

This is modern example, '贵部' (Your department) has a space before it.

You can check more infos about '抬头' from wikipedia