Spanish Punctuation

Understanding Spanish punctuation and its correct placement is really not that difficult.

NOTE: If you came here looking for a way to type punctuation and accent marks in Spanish on your computer, you can find that on the next page.

As far as I know Spanish is the only language that uses this kind of punctuation.

¿ Question Marks ?

You will notice that in Spanish if it is a question there is an upside down or inverted question mark ¿ at the beginning of the sentence or phrase and a right side up one ? at the end.

• ¿Qué hora es? - What time is it?
• ¿Habla inglés? - Do you speak English?
• Muy bien ¿y tú? - Very well, and you?
  

I'd like to point out a couple of things here.

In the second bullet point, the Spanish word for English is not capitalized? In Spanish they do not capitalize names of languages.

What is capitalized in the Spanish language is:

• names of places
• religions
• names of people, places, books, magazines, newspapers
• Titles such as Dr. or Sr. (señor)
• nationality

Notice that in the third bullet down, ONLY the question portion of the sentence has the question marks around it? This is how it is done in Spanish. It identifies that the next portion of the sentence is a question.

In fact, it is really helpful when you are reading something because question marks and exclamation marks are placed at the beginning AND the at the end of a sentence, command or phrase. It is the verbal equivalent of making gestures, if you will.

¡Exclamation Marks!

The same applies here as does with question marks. With Spanish punctuation, an exclamation mark is placed and the beginning AND the end of the sentence or phrase.

• ¡Qué bonito! - That's pretty!
• ¡No me digas! - You don't say!
• ¡Qué bueno! - That's good!

They are also used in direct commands.

• ¡Vamos! - Let's go!
• ¡Venga! - Come!
• ¡Camina! - Walk!

If a sentence contains both a question and an exclamation, you can put one at each end of the sentence based on where it belongs. ¡So sorry, está bien? Sorry, are you ok?

Commas in numbers

In Spanish punctuation, the use of the comma and the period/full stop is the exact opposite from English.

For example: $15,000 vs $15.000 (In Spanish) Also, in English where we use the decimal point, in Spanish they use a comma.

For example: 5.56 vs 2,43 (In Spanish)

Angled quotation marks « »

These are used based on geographic location. They are mostly used in Spain, whereas the regular quotation marks are more commonly used in Latin America.

The biggest difference is that in Spanish the question marks stay inside the punctuation while they stay outside in English

Quiero mirar "CSI". OR Quiero mirar «CSI». I want to watch "CSI."

Dash -

This is typically used in dialogue to indicate a change in the speaker, which then replaces the quotation marks. Whereas in English; each speaker is typically separated by a paragraph break.

Dashes are also used to indicate that there is a dialogue in the text.

So there you have it, a brief explanation of the use of Spanish punctuation, I hope it helped.