Usage of space before punctuation mark / Leerzeichen vor Satzzeichen

Question

I would like to know what the rules are in German (and if they are different in Switzerland) with respect to spaces before punctuation marks.

I know for sure that . and , are never preceded by a space. But what about :, ;, ? and ! (Doppelpunkt, Semikolon, Fragezeichen, Ausrufezeichen)?

Should I, just like in French, add some space before these punctuation marks? Or not?

Answer 1

According to both my knowledge and this page, you should not.

A space before any of the punctuation marks you mention is colloquially referred to as a "Plenk", derived from English: "blank". Using that makes fun of the mistake of putting a space where none belongs.

Answer 2

Never, never, never and never use a blank before one those punctuation marks, except _(except) if you're writing in the internet (web, email , you name it) and your sentence ends in a webadress like http://german.stackexchange.com .

But there are other punctuation marks, which have other rules, as Em1 points out in the comments: Parenthesis do have space on the outer side, but not on the inner side, and if nested, there is no space between them, and not to other punctation marks:

foo ((example) bar (baz)), foobar

For the dash - we have space before and behind. For the ellipse of triple dots, …, the sentence end is omitted if it is just a dot. Before the ellipse, you put a non breaking space, to avoid it being placed at the beginning of line. Else, it is threatened as what it is replacing.