“Mesta, do the nicks have to be separated with a space.”
No, they don’t have to be separated when you type them in. The FR software converts it automatically. In fact, you don’t even need to capitalize or punctuate the niks. FR software will do that too.
Like for this post, I took the dashes out of your nik and the caps out of mine and Dave’s with no space as an example. (You DO need the semicolons.)
notoillegals;mestamachine;davemellon
Hit preview and viola!
It works!