Punctuation rules in spanish | Learn Spanish (2024)

FAQs

Punctuation rules in spanish | Learn Spanish? ›

Contrary to the norm in English, however, the period also goes after Spanish quotation marks: Antes de salir me dijo: «hoy ceno por fuera».

Contrary to the norm in English, however, the period also goes after Spanish quotation marks: Antes de salir me dijo: «hoy ceno por fuera».

I think it's very useful that written Spanish has not only question marks (¿?) but also exclamation marks (¡!) at both the beginning and the end of a sentence or phrase because it lets you know FROM THE BEGINNING OF A SENTENCE OR PHRASE that it's a question or an exclamation.

When writing numbers, commas are used to separate the integer from the decimals. The use of the decimal point, typical of the English language, is also accepted in some varieties of Spanish: Saqué 6,1 en el examen.

The so-called Oxford comma is not used in Spanish. El presidente señaló que la economía está “mejor que nunca”.

Periods are used to end a sentence while commas add pauses. In Spanish, both question mark and exclamation point symbols are rotated to create the "upside-down symbols" which are used in conjunction with the regular symbol used in English.

The upside-down (also inverted, turned or rotated) question mark ¿ and exclamation mark ¡ are punctuation marks used to begin interrogative and exclamatory sentences or clauses in Spanish and some languages that have cultural ties with Spain, such as Asturian and Waray.

In Spanish, the upside-down exclamation point (¡) is used at the beginning of all exclamatory sentences and clauses.

What number do you put in front of a Spanish number? ›

If you want to call Andalusia/Spain from overseas, you should dial your country exit code, + 34 (the code for Spain), followed by the nine-digit telephone number.

Although there are many punctuation marks common to most languages, there are some that are used in one language or not another, or the same punctuation mark used in a different way. For instance, Spanish and English have similar punctuation marks, but use some of them differently.

Fortunately for English speakers, the official Spanish alphabet now only has the one additional letter that does not appear in the English alphabet: ñ. (Two of the letters in the Spanish alphabet, k and w, exist only to say words of foreign origin, like “kilómetro” and “whisky.”)

The squiggly line also known as the tilde symbol, is called virgulilla in Spanish. It appears on old typewriter keyboards and math equations. In Spanish, it can be used to indicate a change in sign or an approximation of a value. As a diacritic mark, it alters the sound of certain letters in words like mañana and ñaño.

Also make sure that you place quotation marks correctly with respect to other punctuation marks and with citations. 1. The final period or comma goes inside the quotation marks, even if it is not a part of the quoted material, unless the quotation is followed by a citation.

Spanish traditionally uses angle brackets («»), but it's also not incorrect to use English quotation marks (“”). They're mainly used with words from other languages and quotations, as well as for titles of books, movies and other artistic works.

In Spanish, we traditionally use angular quotation marks («») for quotes, and then we can use double (“) quotation marks for a quote within a quote and single (') quotation marks for a quote within a quote within a quote.