Spelling, punctuation, organization; they all are facets on writing in a language. Here you'll find a complete guide to putting your words on paper or the keyboard.
How to use the colon in written Spanish.
The apostrophe is quite rare in modern Spanish. Its uses in English should not be imitated.
Although the period is used in Spanish much like it is in English, there are some differences.
How to use the semicolon in Spanish with examples.
A description, with examples of when to use 'dónde' and related terms such as 'dónde,' 'donde' and 'adónde' in Spanish.
A brief FAQ about the use of punctuation in Spanish.
Answer to the question: What's the deal with the upside-down question marks and exclamation points in Spanish?
Answer to the question: Does punctuation go inside or outside of quotation marks in Spanish?
A brief lesson in ths use of punctuation in Spanish.
An overview of how punctuation is used in Spanish and how it is different than English punctuation.
Dates written in Spanish typically follow the day-month-year pattern.
If you're writing in Spanish, here are instructions for typing accents and Spanish punctuation using the Windows XP or Windows Vista. This page describes how to install the international keyboard software that is part of Windows.
Here are the rules for dividing Spanish words at the end of a line.
List of the common Spanish abbreviations.
An overview of the greetings and salutations used in personal and business letters in Spanish.
Hyphens are used much less in Spanish than in English. If you're learning Spanish, this will explain to how this important punctuation is used.
If you're writing in Spanish with a Mac computer and need to type an accented letter or an upside-down question mark, here's an explanation of how to do it.
If you're writing in Spanish using the Ubuntu distribution of Linux and need to type an accented letter or an upside-down question mark, here's an explanation of how to do it. The steps taken here should work also with any flavor of Linux using the Gnome desktop and should be helpful with other varieties of Linux as well.
In general, Spanish uses capital letters less often than does English. Its rules are much like those of the other Romance languages, with capital letters reserved primarily for proper nouns and the start of sentences.
Spanish and English are very similar in the way they are punctuated, but there are some subtle differences.
Spanish punctuation is so much like English's that some textbooks and reference books don't even discuss it. But there are a few significant differences.
Do you know the rules for writing Spanish? If so, you'll probably do well on this quiz.
The Spanish alphabet is very similar to the alphabets of most other western European languages.
When writing Spanish, you may be tempted to duplicate the spelling of English cognates. This might work — to a point. Here are the key differences in the spelling of the two languages.
Spanish has three types of punctuation used to indicate quotation marks. One of them not familiar to English speakers is the angular quote mark.
List of some of the most common abbreviations used in cell phone text in Spanish.
Learn which syllable of Spanish word receives the stress and how that can be modified through the use of diacritical marks known as accents.
List of Spanish homophones and homonyms, words that sound alike and can easily be confused, along with their definitions.
This is a collection of questions that Spanish students have directed at this site.
How well do you know the rules of written Spanish? Find out by taking this quiz.
Spanish uses significantly fewer capital letters than does English. Whenever Spanish capitalizes a word, the corresponding word in English is capitalized, but the opposite is far from true.
What is the longest word in Spanish? On this matter, at least, the famous book of world records is wrong.
The four
é are often a source of confusion. This lesson explains which one to use where.
If you know how to make nouns plural in English, you're close to knowing how to do so in Spanish.
When one language adopts words from another language, transliteration can be part of the process.
Why is the abbreviation for
Estados Unidos in Spanish
EE. UU instead of
E. U.?
They are also known as accents, tildes and diereses or umlauts.
Some publishers of Spanish-language materials prefer to use angular quotes rather than the quote marks you're used to seeing.
Unlike other accent marks, orthographic accents don't affect pronunciation. But they are vital in proper writing.
Two of the most common conjunctions —
y (meaning "and") and
o (meaning "or") — can change spelling and pronunciation based on the word that follows.
Spanish vowels can be classifed as strong or weak, something that's important to know when syllables matter.
Learn more about when orthographic accents are used in Spanish. Although you may have learned they are used only in questions, there are some types of statements that use them as well.
If you need to type accented letters and are using Windows, here's one way to create the letteers.
Explanation of when written accents and umlauts are used in Spanish.
