diff --git a/src/julia-parser.scm b/src/julia-parser.scm
index f9048eb39f52e3..1e351d7e4ba9ba 100644
--- a/src/julia-parser.scm
+++ b/src/julia-parser.scm
@@ -987,6 +987,7 @@
        (or (not (string? expr))  ;; issue #20575
            (error "cannot juxtapose string literal"))
        (not (initial-reserved-word? t))
+       (not (eqv? t #\@))
        (not (and (pair? expr) (syntactic-unary-op? (car expr))))
        ;; TODO: this would disallow juxtaposition with 0, which is ambiguous
        ;; with e.g. hex literals `0x...`. however this is used for `0im`, which
@@ -2160,6 +2161,9 @@
           ;; macro call
           ((eqv? t #\@)
            (take-token s)
+           (let ((nxt (peek-token s)))
+             (if (ts:space? s)
+                 (disallowed-space '@ nxt)))
            (with-space-sensitive
             (let ((startloc  (line-number-node s))
                   (head (if (eq? (peek-token s) '|.|)
diff --git a/test/parse.jl b/test/parse.jl
index 357e70ce711add..5bd36147945b47 100644
--- a/test/parse.jl
+++ b/test/parse.jl
@@ -1247,3 +1247,7 @@ end === (3, String)
 
 # issue #22840
 @test parse("[:a :b]") == Expr(:hcat, QuoteNode(:a), QuoteNode(:b))
+
+# issue #22868
+@test_throws ParseError parse("x@time 2")
+@test_throws ParseError parse("@ time")