8 fun facts about French and its règles de rédaction

It may feel counterintuitive to hesitate when you’re shouting something from the rooftops, but an exclamation mark needs to be preceded by a space in French. And not just exclamation marks: the same applies to question marks, colons and semicolons. No space is needed before a comma or period, however.

Another feature of written French is that it uses « double guillemets », with a space after the first set of chevrons and a space before the second set.

When talking about money in Dutch, even when it’s about a significant amount, euro isn’t pluralised: “Do you have 10 euro for me” not “10 euros”. In French, euros can be pluralised the same way pounds or dollars can be in English. When French speakers use the euro symbol, they first write the actual number followed by a space, then the symbol: 10 €.

The French use spaces to separate thousands. For example: 1 000 000 or 35 000 €.

Unlike in English, months and days of the week are not capitalised in French. So: dimanche and juillet.

Again, contrary to English speakers, the French don’t use uppercase letters for languages: they speak français.

The French use a lowercase ‘h’ (from heure) to separate hours from minutes when writing the time. Both in written and spoken French, they use the 24-hour format.

The French are rather proud of their language – and staunch defenders of it. Which is why you’ll spot a lot less English in French than in many other languages.

In terms of manners and formality, the French can rival the English. When addressing someone who ‘outranks’ you (oh dear) or an adult you haven’t met before in French, always opt for ‘vous’, the courteous way of saying ‘you’.