I'm -1 on this. You can easily make a helper that achieves the desired syntax. Presenting "human readable data" isn't just about collapsing spaces, and having your own helper means that you can adjust the formatting to your specific use case if needed (for example with a different separator). from typing import Self class StripJoin: def __init__(self, value: str = "") -> None: self.value = value def __and__(self, other: str) -> Self: other = other.strip() separator = bool(self.value and other) * " " return StripJoin(f"{self.value}{separator}{other}") def __str__(self) -> str: return self.value j = StripJoin() print(j & " foo " & " bar " & " something ") # Output: "foo bar something" The example above is more efficient than a possible implementation directly on the str builtin as it doesn't strip the left side over and over. However it still incurs repeated allocations and encourages a pattern that performs badly in loops. With a lot of input you should probably accumulate the stripped strings in a list and join them all at once. In any case I recommend reaching out for a library like Rich (https://github.com/Textualize/rich) if you care about formatting the output of your program nicely.