A lot of Spanish learners give more importance to speaking without making mistakes than writing correctly in Spanish. Nevertheless, both things are equally important in order for us to be understood, also we shouldn’t forget that it is a how we represent ourselves. That is why in this article we are going to show you some fast and easy rules of how to write without mistakes in Spanish:
-Days of the week, months, seasons of the year and languages are spelled starting in lower case letters in Spanish:
martes, febrero, primavera o inglés
-However, zodiac signs, constellations and planets are written starting with a capital letter:
Yo soy Acuario y mi madre es Cáncer
Han encontrado partículas de agua en Marte
-The commercial brands are written starting with a capital letter:
Fanta, Zara, Nestlé
-After colon (:) we also write starting with small letters in Spanish:
Yo practico muchos deportes: tenis, fútbol, balonmano y natación
-When writing a letter or an email, after the headline we are supposed to write colon , not a comma. For instance:
Estimada señora:
Me alegro de que le haya gustado…
-Full stops are not written after years, pages or in telephone numbers:
Nací en 1991
Esa frase está en la página 2498 de La Biblia
El número de 2DayLanguages es el 963 44 61 39
-Also, please, do not write full stops in headlines, article titles, songs, literary works, etc.:
Don Quijote de La Mancha
Harry Potter y la piedra filosofal
-Umlaut (ü) is written with syllables gue y gui when the vowel u is pronounced:
Pingüino
Paragüero
-We can shorten some of the words in the following way:
Don: D.
Doña: Dª.
Etcétera: etc.
Página: pag.
Posdata: p.d
Usted/es: Ud/s.
Santísimo: Smo.
Señor/a: Sr./a
-And when do we put accents in Spanish? That is one of the themes which makes you, Spanish learners, worried most, for this to end, we will give you some of the rules to know which words have accents:
-Words that has emphasis in the last syllabus are called high-pitched and has an accent if it ends up in n, s or vowel (a, e, i, o, u): camión, inglés, rompió.
-Words that the strongest syllabus is antepenultimate (pen ultimately stressed) and ends up in a consonant that is not n nor s also has accent: fácil, lápiz, débil.
-Words that are stressed on the third to last syllable always has an accent: académico, caótico, cómetelo.
-However, there are some exceptions:
-Monosyllables (words with one syllable) usualy do not have an accent: pan, mar, fe. Some monosyllables do have an accent to differentiate them from the others, for example:
Te like a pronoun does not have an accent, in contrary, té the drink has an an accent:
Te quiero mucho
Quiero té, que hace frío
Mi like possessive does not have an accent, but mí like a personal pronoun does:
Mi guitarra suena muy bien
Esta pizza es para mí
Si like conditional conjunction does not have an accent, but sí as affirmation does:
Si me quieres, ven
Sí, quiero casarme contigo
-If an adverb that ends up in –mente has formed in adding this termination to an adjective and the adjective has an accent, it can’t be missed out:
Ágilmente, trágicamente, cortésmente
–There are some words that can be written in both ways:
Austriaco/ austríaco, atmósfera/ atmosfera, kárate/ karate
In 2DayLanguages, in our Spanish school, we believe that it is very important to learn how to speak and write without making mistakes. Therefore, we recommend you to checkout diccionaries like Diccionary of Spanish Languages (Diccionario de la lengua española – DRAE) which has an online edition or webpages like the FUNDEU. To FUNDEU you can send any of your doubts or questions. In addition to all that, we invite you to visit our Spanish school and read our blog. It’s been proved that reading is the best method to learn how to write correctly.
