General Advice on Writing in Spanish

The presentation of Spanish is very similar to that of English and what counts as good practice in one language is almost certainly valid for the other. When writing in a foreign language it pays to bear a few points in mind. It is complicated enough to think in the foreign language without making things more difficult by trying to manage complex structures and sentences. So a golden rule is, "Keep it simple." But if this is carried to extremes, your writing may just become boring and colourless. So perhaps this maxim could be modified to, "Keep it manageable."

To achieve this, make sure you break your text into paragraphs. These should develop in a logical way with one idea per paragraph. Make sure also that your sentences really are sentences, that is that they contain the basic elements of a sentence: the very minimum is a subject and verb. However, to maintain your reader’s interest you will need additional elements in your sentences. It is surprising how easy it is to lapse into writing sentences without verbs. This may be all right in one’s own language, but it will not impress the Spanish reader.

The following hints and reminders should help to make your written Spanish more acceptable to the Spanish reader by avoiding mistakes and un-Spanish expressions derived from English conventions. They inevitably distract attention from what you wish to convey.

Punctuation

As a general rule the punctuation of Spanish and English is very similar. However, there are a number of conventions which are well worth bearing in mind. The first thing that most people would recognise is that Spanish direct questions always begin with an inverted question mark, ¿ . You can find this under Symbol in the Insert drop-down menu on the Word toolbar. Similarly exclamations in Spanish are always preceded by the inverted exclamation mark, ¡ . This symbol is also to be found in Symbol under Insert in the Word drop-down menu. It may also be worth remembering that if you press Number Lock on your keyboard; Alt + 168 gives ¿ and Alt + 173 gives ¡.

Abbreviations

Spanish, like English, uses many abbreviations. However, contemporary English writing tends to omit the point, or full stop, in many cases. The convention in Spanish is to use the point with abbreviations, so write etc. instead of etc in all cases.

Other common abbreviations are p.ej. (= por ejemplo), apdo. (apartado de Correos), Avda. (=Avenida). However, not all apparent abbreviations have points. Many are acronyms, the initials of an organization, product etc, and are pronounced as the sum of their letters like a word, examples are AVE for the high speed train, OTAN the Spanish for Nato and Renfe for the Spanish state railway company.

Direct speech

The most common way of indicating dialogue in Spanish is the use of the long dash:

— ¿Es Ud el nuevo empleado? — le pregunté.

— Sí — respondió.

Quotations

When quoting word for word what someone has said the use of double angle brackets is common: << >>. However, it is worth noting that the use of inverted commas is becoming increasingly common. As in English with inverted commas, << >> are also used to highlight a word within a text, where you may want to draw attention to it because it is strange or remarkable in some way.

The colon

The colon is used in Spanish in much the same way as in English. There is an important instance where conventions in Spanish differ from those of British English. When starting a letter with the equivalent of Dear Mr Smith, a colon must be used:

Estimado Sr Smith:

Estimada Sra González:

Querida Marta:

(In American English, of course a colon is used in exactly the same way as in Spanish.)

The comma

The use of the comma is similar in Spanish and English usage. But as in other European languages, there is an important difference in its use in numbers and decimals. (Mexico follows the American use of the point and comma in numbers.)

A point is used to indicate thousands; for example one thousand is written:

British and US	Spanish
1,000	1.000

A comma is used to show a decimal:

British and US	Spanish
1.275	1,275

Capital and lower case letters

There are parallels and important differences in the conventions regarding capitalization in the two languages.

Proper names in both languages take a capital, for example geographical names:

Barcelona, Madrid, Londres, París, Italia, Andalucía, Canarias

el Nilo – the Nile, el Ebro – the Ebro, el Támesis – the Thames, la Sena – the Seine

But whereas the names of countries in both languages take a capital letter, the names of their inhabitants, their language and adjectives derived from them all take lower case initial letters in Spanish:

Francia	France
un francés	a Frenchman
una francesa	a Frenchwoman
los franceses	the French
el francés	French (the language)
francés, francesa	French (the adjective: un fubolista francés, a French fooball-player; a French word, una palabra francesa)
franceses, francesas	French (plural adjective futbolistas franceses, palabras francesas)

Other nouns and adjectives, which in English would be spelt with a capital, take a small letter in Spanish:

adjectives and nouns derived from place names:

madrileño – ña	derived from Madrid
barcelonés – lonesa	derived from Barcelona
limeño – ña	derived from Lima
neoyorquino – na	derived from Nueva York
londinense	derived from Londres (London)

adjectives and nouns derived from names of founders of movements, schools of thought, etc.

estalinista	Stalinist
maoismo	Maoism
peronismo	Peronism
cristiano –na	Christian
cristiandad	Christianity

Names of days of the week and months take a small letter in Spanish.

lunes, martes	Monday, Tuesday
marzo, abril	March, April

Personal names, including nicknames, take a capital letter:

Pedro – Peter,

Juan – John,

Juana – Joan,

Cristina –Christine,

Pepe – Joe (roughly)

Note that titles of political post-holders are spelled with small letters:

el canciller alemán, Gerhard Schröder	the German Chancellor
el primer ministro chino	the Chinese Prime Minister

It is by no means unusual to see these conventions broken, especially in advertising, but it is not safe to use such texts as models for your writing. Frequently advertising copy-writers are aiming to produce subtle effects, which will just appear to be a mistake in a different context.

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