空格

[devi9]

Could someone help me figure out what "空格" means? Here's a sentence:

段落开头一般要留出两个空格.

Thanks!

[roddy]

Space - leave two spaces at the start of a paragraph.

Here, what does 格 refer to? Is it the kind of squares you get on some Chinese writing paper?

Roddy

[devi9]

Thanks!

I think so, my friend was trying to tell me how to properly write a letter.

[xuezhongwen]

空格 means "empty square". If you understand the way Chinese characters were written, each character is supposed to take a same size square. In the old days, notebooks had 10 columns x 20 rows (or other sizes) squares on a page, each square is a '格', so you should leave the first two squares empty, hence, 空格.

[roddy]

Right, that's what I thought. Thanks.

[Quest]

Here, what does 格 refer to? Is it the kind of squares you get on some Chinese writing paper?

Yes those 400-square writing paper used for essays and compositions.

[laohu489]

It is called 方格纸 in Beijing but in Shanghai has a different name that escapes me right now.

[skylee]

those 400-square writing paper used for essays and compositions

I was surprised that my 10-year old niece did not know what 原稿紙 was, and had not seen such paper before when I mentioned it. Because she is a computer age kid, and had never seen the paper, she could not understand what 爬格子 was either (made me wonder what she was learning at school...).

[YesterdayOnceMore]

As a matter of fact, 两个空格 means the room for 2 Chinese characters. In China, people don't usually write letters on full-of-square paper. The most popular and usual paper is designed in lines. Those squres are mostly used for students' writing practice on the purpose of a neat work.

Space for two Chinese charactors should be left at the beginning of every paragraph. It's part of the format of writing in Chinese. So, no matter what kind of paper you are using, you still need to spaces.

[Quest]

we call that 原稿紙 in guangzhou too.

[qiaoan]

方格纸 is called 文稿纸 in shanghainese

[eddiewouldgo]

Could someone help me figure out what "空格" means? Here's a sentence:

段落开头一般要留出两个空格.

Thanks!

How about: 段落开头一般要格空两个空格

[shibo77]

I always hear 草稿纸, or simply 稿纸.

-Shìbó