Spaces in Japanese


I don't understand how Japanese space their words in a sentence. Can someone
explain it? I've looked around online but haven't really read something that
made me understand it completely. Is it case by case or is there a general
rule?




Ordinary Japanese sentences for adults do not have spaces at all. The only
exception is after a western-style question/exclamation mark at the end of a
sentence, where a small space is usually inserted. This is because the
combination of kana and kanji will usually give us enough hint to tell word
boundaries.

When kanji is not available for whatever reason, spaces are often used to help
readers. See: [Spaces in children's
books](https://japanese.stackexchange.com/q/27624/5010). You may see sentences
including spaces in beginner textbooks. In addition, lyrics, haiku and poems
tend not to have punctuation marks, so they use spaces instead.

