Spanish orthography

Spanish orthography is the orthography used in the Spanish language. The alphabet uses the Latin script. The spelling is fairly phonemic, especially in comparison to more opaque orthographies like English, having a relatively consistent mapping of graphemes to phonemes; in other words, the pronunciation of a given Spanish-language word can largely be predicted from its spelling and to a slightly lesser extent vice versa. Spanish punctuation uniquely includes the use of question and exclamation marks">question mark">question and exclamation marks: .
Spanish uses capital letters much less often than English; they are not used on adjectives derived from proper nouns and book titles capitalize only the first word.
Spanish uses only the acute accent over any vowel:. This accent is used to mark the tonic syllable, though it may also be used occasionally to distinguish homophones such as si and sí. The only other diacritics used are the tilde on the letter, which is considered a separate letter from, and the diaeresis used in the sequences and —as in bilingüe —to indicate that the is pronounced, rather than having the usual silent role that it plays in unmarked and .
In contrast with English, Spanish has an official body that governs linguistic rules, orthography among them: the Royal Spanish Academy, which makes periodic changes to the orthography. The currently valid work on orthography is the , published in 2010.

Alphabet in Spanish

The Spanish language is written using the Spanish alphabet, which is the ISO Latin script with one additional letter, eñe, for a total of 27 letters. Although the letters and are part of the alphabet, they appear only in loanwords such as,, and and in sensational spellings: Squatting in Spain#Okupa,. Each letter has a single official name according to the Real Academia Española's new 2010 Common Orthography, but in some regions alternative traditional names coexist as explained below. The digraphs and were considered single letters of the alphabet from 1754 to 2010. Letters in red were, but are no longer, part of the alphabet.

Uppercase	A	B	C	Ch	D	E	F	G	H	I
Lowercase	a	b	c	ch	d	e	f	g	h	i
Name	a	be	ce	che	de	e	efe	ge	hache	i
Phoneme			,					,	silent

The digraph represents the affricate. The digraph was formerly treated as a single letter, called che.
The phonemes and are not distinguished in most dialects; see seseo.
With the exception of some loanwords:,,, which have.

Uppercase	J	K	L	Ll	M	N	Ñ	O	P	Q
Lowercase	j	k	l	ll	m	n	ñ	o	p	q
Name	jota	ka	ele	elle	eme	ene	eñe	o	pe	cu
Phoneme						,

The digraph represents the palatal lateral in a few dialects; but in most dialects—because of the historical merger called yeísmo—it, like the letter, represents the phoneme.
The exact realization of nasals in syllable-final position depends on phonetic attributes of following consonants so that can represent a nasal that is labial, palatal, velar, etc. In rare instances, word-final is used, but there is no actual pronunciation difference.
Used only in the digraph.

Uppercase	R	S	T	U	V	W	X	Y	Z
Lowercase	r	s	t	u	v	w	x	y	z
Name	erre	ese	te	u	uve, ve, ve corta, ve baja, ve chica	uve doble, ve doble, doble ve, doble u	equis	ye, i griega	zeta
Phoneme	,					,	,	,

The digraph, which only appears between vowels, represents the trill.
Old orthography with the letter representing has been preserved in some proper names such as Name of Mexico.
For details on Spanish pronunciation, see Spanish phonology and Help:IPA/Spanish.
When acute accent and diaeresis marks are used on vowels they are considered variants of the plain vowel letters, but is considered a separate letter from. This makes a difference when sorting alphabetically: appears in dictionaries after. For example, in a Spanish dictionary comes after.
There are five digraphs: , , , and . While che and elle were each formerly treated as a single letter, in 1994 the tenth congress of the Association of Spanish Language Academies agreed to alphabetize and as ordinary sequences of letters. Spain requested the change at the behest of UNESCO and the European Union, in an effort to facilitate translation and computing.
Thus, for example, in dictionaries, is alphabetized after and before, instead of being alphabetized after all words beginning with cu- as was formerly done.
Despite their former status as unitary letters of the alphabet, and have always been treated as sequences with regard to the rules of capitalization. Thus the word in a text written in all caps is CHILLÓN, not *ChILlÓN, and if it is the first word of a sentence, it is written Chillón, not *CHillón. Sometimes, one finds lifts with buttons marked, but this double capitalization has always been incorrect according to RAE rules.
This is the list of letters from most to least frequent in Spanish texts: ; the vowels make up around 45% of the text.

Alternative names

;B and V
;R
;W
;I
;Y
;Z

Other characters

Besides the letters, other characters are specially associated with Spanish-language texts:

The currency symbols of Spanish-language countries: , , , , .
, abbreviation of or
and are used in abbreviations like 1.º, 1.ª or D.ª ; in ordinal numbers they match the grammatical gender of the noun being modified: masculine and feminine. N.º can be represented as one character.
is the symbol of the arroba, a pre-metric unit of weight.
and are used at the beginning of interrogative and exclamatory sentences, respectively. They are also used in the middle of a sentence if only part of the sentence is a question or exclamation:
The guillemets and are used in formal settings in the same sense as quotation marks, although they are very uncommon in informal usage.

Orthography

Orthographic principles

Spanish orthographic rules are similar, but not identical, to those of other Romance languages of the Iberian Peninsula, such as Portuguese, Catalan and Galician.
In general, the orthography of Spanish is such that the pronunciation of most words is unambiguous given their written form. The main exception is the letter, which usually represents or, but can also represent or, especially in proper nouns from times of Old Spanish.
The converse does not always hold, i.e. for a given pronunciation there may be multiple possible spellings, as a result of decisions by the Royal Spanish Academy. The main issues are:

the use of both and for ;
the use of both and for before and ;
the silent ;
the occasional use of accents to distinguish two words that sound the same, such as /, /, and / .

For some speakers, additional problems may come from:

the use of and ;
*the use of /, and as part of a rising diphthong at the beginning of words ;
the use of and , either for or for ;
the use of and the letter combinations and before and, either for or for ;
the use of, and before a vowel for ;
the use of both and for before consonants.

The use of and, and, and the silent is mostly based on etymology. In particular, using in many cases is not a living continuation of Old Spanish, but an artificial restitution based on Latin: 'horse' is spelled as Latin and unlike French, Italian, Portuguese, or Catalan. The letter is used in place of Latin and : <, <, <. Additionally, is a purely orthographical sign used before word-initial rising diphthongs. However, in some words RAE mandated counteretymological spellings because of established tradition of usage, e.g. <.
The Ortografía includes a series of "rules of thumb" on using the letters,,,,, and. For example, verbs ending in -bir are spelled with, except,,, and their derivatives.

sound	before	elsewhere
	or	or

	or

In some Spanish verbs, the same stem is spelled differently before different verb endings. This is required to keep the regularity of the conjugated forms in terms of sound, when a letter represents different sounds, or to avoid unusual combinations, such as -ze- or -qua-:

: qu↔c: → ; → .
: c↔z: → ; → .
: gü↔gu: → ; → .
: gu↔g: → ; → .
: g→j: → . But in verbs ending in -jar, the is kept before : → .

The same occurs in other parts of speech when combined with certain suffixes, such as / for nouns and pronouns or / for adjectives and adverbs: → ; → ; → ; → ; → ; → ; → ; →. Likewise, nouns and adjectives ending in change this letter to in the plural for similar reasons: → ; →.

Letter-to-sound correspondences

Consonants

Letter	Context	IPA	Examples	English approximation
b or v	word-initial after a pause, or after or		; ; ;	practically the same as the typical English, except that it is fully voiced; e.g. about
b or v	elsewhere		; ; ; ; ;	between baby and bevy
b or v	rare: at the end of loanwords	or	; ;	same as the typical English or ; e.g. vase or fase
c	before or	or	;	same as the English voiceless ⟨th⟩ in central and northern Spain, or the typical English in all other regions
c	before voiced consonants			a sound between a light English and the typical English
c	elsewhere		; ; ;	same as certain instances of English or ; e.g. skull, scan, or picking
ch	everywhere	or	;	same as the typical English ; church
d	word-initial after a pause, or after or		; ;	practically the same as the typical English, except that it is fully voiced and the tip of the tongue touches the upper teeth; e.g. adore
d	elsewhere		; ; ; ;	same as the typical English voiced ⟨th⟩; e.g. this
f	before voiced consonants		;	same as the typical English ; e.g. vase
f	elsewhere		;	same as the typical English ; e.g. face
g	before or	or		similar to a "strong" English -sound or aspirated
g	not before or, and either word-initial after a pause, or after		; ;	practically the same as the typical English sound, except that it is fully voiced; e.g. ago
g	not before or, and not in the above contexts		; ; ;	a sound between a light English and the typical English
gu	before or, and either word-initial after a pause, or after		;	a sound like the in English language
gu	before or, and not in the above contexts		;	similar to the typical English, but preceded by a soft guttural sound
gu	before or, and either word-initial after a pause, or after			practically the same as the typical English sound, except that it is fully voiced; e.g. ago
gu	before or, and not in the above contexts			a sound between a light English and the typical English
gü	before or, and either word-initial after a pause, or after		,	a sound like the in English penguin
gü	before or, and not in the above contexts			similar to the typical English, but preceded by a soft guttural sound
h	everywhere		; ; ; ;	silent
h	everywhere; occurs in loanwords and foreign proper names	or	,,,,,,, Wahid	similar to a "strong" English -sound or aspirated
hi	before a vowel	or	;	similar to or the same as the typical English ; e.g. you
hu	before a vowel		;	usually the same as the in English we
j	everywhere	or	; ; ;	similar to a "strong" English -sound or aspirated
k	rare; only occurs in a few loanwords and sensational spellings		,,	same as certain instances of English or ; e.g. skull, scan, or picking
l	everywhere		; ;	same as the typical English ; e.g. pull
ll	everywhere	, or	;	similar to the in English million
m	everywhere except word-finally		; ;	same as the typical English ; medal
m	word-final	or		varying between the typical English and, e.g. the in English sing
n	word-final	or		varying between the typical English and, e.g. the in English sing
n	everywhere but before other consonants		; ;	same as the typical English ; e.g. nu'n
n'	before other consonants			same as the typical English ; imperfect same as the English in symphony same as the typical English same as the English in canyon same as the typical English
ñ	everywhere	or	;	roughly like minion
p	everywhere		; ;	same as certain instances of English ; e.g. span or typing
p	in the consonant cluster			between baby and bevy
qu	before or			same as certain instances of English or ⟨q⟩; e.g. skull, scan, or unique
qu	elsewhere; rare, and usually occurs in loanwords of Latin or English origin; considered by the RAE as an unadapted foreign spelling		,,	same as the typical English : quality
r	word-initial, morpheme-initial, or after,,, or ; in emphatic and oratorical or formal speech, may also be used instead of in syllable-final and word-final positions		; ; ; ; ; ;	trilled or rolled
r	elsewhere		; ; ;	flapped ; e.g. the same sound as the of ladder in American English
rr	only occurs between vowels			trilled or rolled
s	before a voiced consonant		; ; ; ;; ; ; ; ; ; ;	same as the typical English ; e.g. the in is or busy; in central and northern Spain, the Paisa region of Colombia, and the Andes, this sound is made with the tip of the tongue rather than the blade, with a sound quality intermediate between the alveolar of English busy and the palato-alveolar of pleasure
s	everywhere else		; ; ;	same as the typical English ; sa'ss; in central and northern Spain, Paisa region of Colombia, and Andes, this sound is made with the tip of the tongue rather than the blade, with a sound quality intermediate between the alveolar of English s'ea and the palato-alveolar of sure
sh	only used in loanwords, generally from English; considered by the RAE as an unadapted foreign spelling	or	,,, Ancash Region,,	same as the typical English ; e.g. sheesh; when this digraph is equated with the phoneme , the sound is made with the tip of the tongue rather than the blade, with a sound quality intermediate between the alveolar of English sea and the palato-alveolar of she
t	everywhere		;	same as certain instances of English ; e.g. sta. Also, the tip of the tongue touches the upper teeth, rather than the alveolar ridge and found in the word month
t	before voiced consonants			same as the typical English voiced ⟨th⟩; e.g. this
tl	rare; mostly in loanwords from Nahuatl	or	; ;	similar to the combined sound in English cat-like
tz	rare; from loanwords		; Pátzcuaro	same as in English cats
w	rare; in loanwords from English and non-European languages		,,,, Wahid,	usually the same as the in English water
w	rare; in loanwords from German and in Visigothic names; word-initial after a pause, or after or		; Wamba ; Wittenberg	same as the typical English ; e.g. bi'b
w'	rare; in loanwords from German and in Visigothic names; elsewhere		Volkswagen, Ludwig	between baby and bevy
x	between vowels and word-finally		; ;,	same as the typical English ; e.g. taxi or exactly
x	word-initially			same as the typical English ; sa'ss; in central and northern Spain, Paisa region of Colombia, and Andes, this sound is made with the tip of the tongue rather than the blade, with a sound quality intermediate between the alveolar of English s'ea and the palato-alveolar of she
x	before a consonant	or		same as the typical English or ; e.g. max or mass
x	in some words borrowed from Nahuatl, mostly place names, and in some Spanish proper names conserving archaic spelling	or	Name of Mexico; ; ; ; Axarquía; ; ; ;	similar to a "strong" English -sound or aspirated
x	in some words from indigenous American languages, mostly place names	or	; ;	same as the typical English ; e.g. sheesh; when this is equated with the phoneme , the sound is made with the tip of the tongue rather than the blade, with a sound quality intermediate between the alveolar of English sea and the palato-alveolar of she
y	as a semivowel	or	,	same as the typical English ; aye, boy
y	as a consonant	, , or	; ;	similar to the typical English, or but softer; e.g. similar to yes, Jess or yeast
z	usually does not occur before or	or	; ;	same as the English voiceless ⟨th⟩ in central and northern Spain, or the typical English in all other regions
z	before voiced consonants	or	,,	same as the typical English voiced ⟨th⟩; e.g. this in central and northern Spain, or the typical English ; e.g. the in is or busy

Vowels

Letter	IPA	Examples	English approximation
a			between trap and spa
e			between bet and bait
i		;	ski city
y			ski city
o			between coat and caught
u		;	rule

The phoneme is realized as an approximant in all contexts except after a pause, a nasal, or a lateral. In these environments, it may be
realized as an affricate. The approximant allophone differs from non-syllabic in a number of ways; it has a lower F2 amplitude, is longer, can only appear in the syllable onset, is a palatal fricative in emphatic pronunciations, and is unspecified for rounding. The two also overlap in distribution after and : . Although there is dialectal and ideolectal variation, speakers may also exhibit other near-minimal pairs such as and , or even minimal pairs across word boundaries such as and . There are some alternations between the two, prompting scholars like to postulate an archiphoneme, so that would be transcribed phonemically as and as.
In a number of varieties, including some American ones, a process parallel to the one distinguishing non-syllabic from consonantal occurs for non-syllabic and a rare consonantal. Near-minimal pairs include vs. , vs , and vs .

Doubling of vowels and consonants

Vowels in Spanish can be doubled to represent a hiatus of two identical vowels; e.g.,,,. This especially happens in prefixed and compound words; e.g.,,. However, in this case simplification of double vowels is also mostly allowed; e.g.,,. Simplification is not allowed when it would change the meaning: but .
The only consonant letters that can be doubled in the Spanish orthography are, , , , and . Exceptions to this limitation are ,,,, as well as unadapted foreign words and their derivations. When a double consonant other than or would appear on a morpheme border, it is simplified: for + +, for +. However, the combination + is pronounced with a prolonged and has no correct spelling according to the current orthography. Using the spelling salle is considered incorrect, since it would imply a wrong pronunciation ; spellings such as sal-le and sal·le have been proposed but rejected by the RAE.

Optional omission of a consonant in consonant combination

In some words, one of consonants in a consonant combination may optionally be omitted. This includes Greek-derived words such as /, / and other words such as /, /, / .

The letter Y

The letter is consistently used in the consonantal value. The use of the letter for a vowel or a semivowel is very restricted. The diphthongs are usually written at the end of words, though exceptions occur in loanwords and in Chilean voseo forms. The spelling is used at the end of some words, where it is pronounced as a falling diphthong, such as cocuy; the word muy may also be pronounced with a raising diphthong. The letter is conserved in rarely used encliticized verbal forms like doyte, haylas. The letter is used for the vowel in the conjunction and in some acronyms, like . Otherwise, for a vowel or semivowel occurs only in some archaically spelled proper names and their derivations: Guaymas, guaymeño, and also fraybentino. Derivatives of foreign proper names also conserve : taylorismo, from Taylor.

Special and modified letters

The vowels can be marked with an acute accent——for two purposes: to mark stress if it does not follow the most common pattern, or to differentiate words that are otherwise spelled identically. The accented is found only in some proper names: Aýna, Spain,,.
A silent is used between and or to indicate a hard pronunciation, so that represents and represents. The letter is used in this context to indicate that the is not silent, e.g. . The diaeresis may occur also in Spanish poetry, occasionally, over either vowel of a diphthong, to indicate an irregular disyllabic pronunciation required by the meter.
Also a silent always follows a when followed by or, as in and, but there is no case for the combination, with fulfilling this role. There are no native words in Spanish with the combination nor ; again, is used instead. When they appear, usually from Latin idioms such as, the is not silent, so is never needed after. Prior to the introduction of the 2010 Common Orthography words such as , or were spelled with ; this is no longer so.

Keyboard requirements

To write Spanish on a typewriter or to set type, the special characters required are,,,,,,,,,, and. The uppercase,,,, and are also prescribed by the RAE, although occasionally dispensed with in practice.
As implemented on the mechanical typewriter, the keyboard contained a single dead key, with the acute accent in the lowercase position, and the diaeresis in the uppercase position. With these, one could write,,,,, and. A separate key provided.. The inverted marks and completed the required minimum. When an additional key was added to electro-mechanical typewriters, this was used for and, though these are not required.
As implemented in the MS-DOS operating system and its successor Microsoft Windows, a / pair—not required in Spanish but needed for Catalan, Portuguese, and French—is typically added, and the use of the acute accent and diaeresis with capital letters is supported. Although not needed for Spanish, another dead key with in lowercase position and in uppercase position was included. Also available is . To make room for these characters not on the standard English keyboard, characters used primarily in programming, science, and mathematics— and,, and, and and —are removed, requiring special keystroke sequences to access.
On a USA or UK physical keyboard, all of the Spanish characters are present using the US-International layout.

Stress and accentuation

is marked unequivocally through a series of orthographic rules. The default stress is on the penultimate syllable on words that end in a vowel, or and on the final syllable when the word ends in any consonant other than or or in a consonant group. Words that do not follow the default stress have an acute accent over the stressed vowel. In many cases, the accent is essential to understanding what a word means, for example contrasts with .
A corollary of the accentuation rule above is that the written accent can sometimes appear in certain forms of a word but not others, to indicate that the same syllable is stressed. For example:

Some nouns and adjectives gain or lose their accent mark when they become plural: e.g. → ; →.
Verbs may gain or lose their accent mark when a pronominal suffix is added: e.g. + → ; + lo →.
* An accent mark is always present if two pronouns are suffixed: + + lo → ; + me + lo →.

For purposes of counting syllables and assigning stress in Spanish, where an unmarked high vowel is followed by another vowel the sequence is treated as a rising diphthong, counted as a single syllable—unlike Portuguese and Catalan, which tend to treat such a sequence as two syllables. A syllable is of the form XAXX, where X represents a consonant, permissible consonant cluster, or no sound at all, and A represents a vowel, diphthong, or triphthong. A diphthong is any sequence of an unstressed high vowel with another vowel, and a triphthong is any combination of three vowels beginning and ending with unstressed high vowels. Hence, Spanish writes , while Portuguese and Catalan both put an accent mark on '. By contrast, Spanish puts the accent on, while Portuguese and Catalan spell ' without the accent.
An accent over the high vowel of a vowel sequence prevents it from being a diphthong : for example,,, and all have two syllables each.
The letter is not considered an interruption between vowels for diphthongisation purposes; for instance, is considered to have two syllables: ahu-mar. As such, it is also not taken into account when determining the stressed syllable; for example, has three syllables, with a being the stressed vowel: de-sahu-cio. This is also why words such as require an acute accent over the high vowel to break the diphthong.
If the diphthongs are written at the end of words, the letter is considered a consonant letter for the purpose of accentuation:,.
A word with final stress is called oxytone ; a word with penultimate stress is called paroxytone ; a word with antepenultimate stress is called proparoxytone. A word with preantepenultimate stress or earlier does not have a common linguistic term in English, but in Spanish receives the name. All proparoxytones and sobresdrújulas have a written accent mark.
Adjectives spelled with a written accent keep the written accent when they are made into adverbs with the -mente ending, and do not gain any if they do not have one. In the pronunciation of these adverbs—as with all adverbs in —primary stress is on the ending, on the penultimate syllable. The original stress of the adjective—whether marked, as in fácilmente, or not marked, as in libremente—may be manifested as a secondary stress in the adverb.
Some words, such as,, and, are pronounced either with a diphthong or with a hiatus between the adjacent vowels, depending on the region. Pre-1999 orthographic rules treated these as hiatus, and accentuated the words accordingly. The 1999 orthography reform by the RAE admitted the two spellings, corresponding to two different pronunciations. The subsequent 2010 reform, though, declared that for orthographic and syllabification purposes such letter combinations should always be considered diphthongs, so the only correct spelling is now guion and truhan. Regardless of the spelling, however, these words may still be pronounced with a hiatus as before, and RAE does not discourage this practice. Furthermore, other grammatical rules were not changed by the reform; for example, "trees and grass" can be translated as either árboles y hierba or árboles e hierba ; the latter form is still correct even though hie is always treated as a diphthong for the purposes of syllabification.

Accentuation of capital letters

The Real Academia Española indicates that accents are required on capitals.

Differential accents

In eight cases, the written accent is used to distinguish stressed monosyllabic words from clitics:

Clitic	Stressed word

The written accent in the word té is conserved in its plural:. However, it is usually not conserved in the imperatives dé and sé when combined with a pronominal suffix, unless it is necessary for stress purposes and dé + → , but dé + me + lo → ).
Names of letters and musical notes are written without the accent, even if they have homonymous clitics: a, de, e, o, te, u; mi, la, si.
The written accent is also used in the interrogative pronouns to distinguish them from relative pronouns :

Relative	Interrogative

The use of in the word is a hypercorrection. Up until 2010, was used when applied to numbers: 7 ó 9, to avoid possible confusion with the digit 0. The tenth congress of the Association of Spanish Language Academies deemed the use of an accent unnecessary, as typewriting eliminates possible confusion due to the different shapes of and .
The differential accent is sometimes used in demonstrative pronouns to distinguish them from demonstrative determiners and in the adverb 'only' to distinguish it from the adjective. However, the current position of the RAE is not to use accent in these words regardless of their meaning, except in cases of possible ambiguity.
These diacritics are often called acentos diacríticos or tildes diacríticas in traditional Spanish grammar.

Foreign words

Loanwords in Spanish are usually written according to Spanish spelling conventions ; such as in pádel, fútbol, chófer, máster, and cederrón. However, some foreign words are used in Spanish texts in their original forms, not conforming to Spanish orthographic conventions: e.g. ballet, blues, jazz, jeep, lady, pizza, sheriff, software.
The RAE prescribes extranjerismos crudos to be written in italics in a text printed in roman type, and vice versa, and in quotation marks in a manuscript text or when italics are not available:
Spanish-speakers use both English-style and angled quotation marks, so the above example could also be written as follows:
This typographical emphasis is prescribed by the RAE since 1999. In practice, this RAE prescription is not always followed.
This typographical emphasis is not used for foreign proper names and their derivations with the suffixes -iano, -ismo, -ista; nor is it used for some Spanish derivations of extranjerismos crudos, such as pizzería.
According to the RAE rules, presence of the letters and, and also the letter representing an aspirated sound, does not impede a loanword to be considered a Spanish word and to be written without the typographical emphasis and with an added acute accent if it is necessary to indicate the stressed syllable:,.
However, spellings such as for or for are not considered as belonging to the Spanish orthography, so words containing them are considered extranjerismos crudos and should be typographically emphasized according to RAE prescriptions: quad, squash, sherpa, show, flash. Before 2010, some words were written using for and the Spanish accent mark: quásar, quórum, exequátur. Since 2010, they are prescribed to be written either as cuásar, cuórum, execuátur or as unadapted foreign words quasar, quorum, exequatur with the typographical emphasis. However, for is used together with the Spanish accent mark in some proper names such as Department of Ancash or Shanghai, or even in rare words from non-Latin-script languages such as sharía.
According to the current Ortografía, Latin expressions are treated as unadapted foreign words, so they are also typographically emphasized. From 1870 to 2010, Latin expressions in Spanish texts were accentuated according to the Spanish orthographical rules and not typographically emphasized. Some Latin expressions have become single words in Spanish: etcétera, suigéneris. These words are not typographically emphasized.
For foreign names from non-Latin-script languages, using Spanish orthographic transcription is recommended: Al-Yazira, Menájem Beguín.

Capitalization

Capitalization in Spanish is sparse compared to English.
In general, only personal and place names, some abbreviations ; the first word in the title of a book, movie, song, etc. ; and the first word in a sentence are capitalized, as are names of companies, government bodies, celebrations, periodicals, etc. Some geographical names have a capitalized article: El Salvador, but los Estados Unidos. Capitalized article is also used in names of periodicals, such as El País, El Nuevo Diario. Some nouns have capital letters when used in a special administrative sense: Estado 'state', but estado 'state'. Nomenclature terms in geographical names are written in lowercase: el mar Mediterráneo 'the Mediterranean Sea'. According to the current Ortografía, geographical names of the type "nomenclature term + adjective from another name of the same geographical object" are not capitalized at all: la península ibérica 'the Iberian Peninsula', because ibérica comes from Iberia, another name of the same peninsula.
Adjectives from geographical names, names of nationalities or languages are not capitalized, nor are days of the week and months of the year.

Writing words together and separately

The following words are written together:

prefixed words, such as ;
adverbs ending in -mente, such as ;
compound words from verbs and nouns, such as ;
the conjunction and the noun ;
indefinite pronouns such as ;
combinations of verbs with enclitic pronouns, such as 'delivering it to me' from 'delivering' + 'me' + 'it'.

The following word combinations are written separately:

compound adverbs such as ;
the interrogative ;
combinations of prefixes and word combinations: .

Coordinated compound adjectives are written with a hyphen:.

Syllabification

Spanish words are divided into syllables using the following rules:
1. A vowel between two consonants always ends the first syllable and the second consonant begins another: pá-ja-ro. Put differently, if a vowel follows a consonant, the consonant, not the vowel, must begin the new syllable.
2. If a vowel is followed by two consonants, the syllables divide between the consonants: can-tar, ver-ter, án-da-le. However, ch, ll, rr and combinations of b, c, d, f, g, k, p, t plus r or l do not divide: pe-rro, lu-char, ca-lle, pro-gra-ma, ha-blar. Exceptionally, r and l after a consonant can begin a new syllable in prefixed or compound words: sub-ra-yar, sub-lu-nar, ciu-dad-re-a-le-ño.
3. Two vowels may form a hiatus or a diphthong : pa-e-lla, puen-te, ra-íz. Three vowels may sometimes form a triphthong: es-tu-diáis.
4. The silent h is not taken into account when syllabifying words. Two vowels separated by an h may form a hiatus or a diphthong: ahu-mar, de-sahu-cio, bú-ho.
The combination tl in the middle of words may be divided into syllables in two ways: at-le-ta or a-tle-ta, corresponding to the pronunciations and .
These rules are used for hyphenating words at the end of line, with the following additional rules:
1. One letter is not hyphenated. So, the word abuelo is syllabified a-bue-lo, but the only way to hyphenate it at the end of a line is abue-lo.
2. Hiatuses are not divided at the end of line. So, the word paella is syllabified as pa-e-lla, but the only way to hyphenate it at the end of a line is pae-lla. This rule includes hiatuses with an intervening silent h: alcohol is syllabified as al-co-hol, but the only way to hyphenate it at the end of a line is al-cohol. On the other hand, the name Mohamed contains a pronounced h, so the hyphenation Mo-hamed is accepted. See also rule 3 containing an exception to this rule.
3. Prefixed and compound words may be divided phonetically or morphologically : bie-nestar or bien-estar, inte-racción or inter-acción, reins-talar or re-instalar.
This rule is not valid:
a) for compounds in which one part is not used as an independent word: pun-tiagudo ;
b) for words with unproductive prefixes: arzo-bispo ;
c) for words containing etymological prefixes not determined as such by surface analysis: adhe-sivo.
4. Unusual combinations containing the letter h are not permitted at the beginning of a line: sulfhí-drico, brah-mán.
The letter x between vowels phonetically represents two consonants separated by a syllable border, but hyphenation at the end of line is permitted before the x: ta-xi, bo-xeo.
Words written with hyphen are hyphenated by repeating the hyphen on the following line: teórico-/-práctico. Repeating the hyphen is not necessary if the hyphenated word is a proper name where a hyphen is followed by a capital letter.

Abbreviations, symbols, acronyms

s are written with the period: art. for. Contractions are written in the same way: admón. for, or sometimes using superscript letters: D.ª for. Hyphenating abbreviations at the end of line is not allowed and putting them in separate lines with terms they accompany is not allowed. Abbreviations are not capitalized if the original word is written in lowercase, but there are some traditional exceptions: Ud. or Vd. for, Sr. for. Rarely, abbreviations are written using the slash: c/ for, b/n for.
One-letter abbreviations are pluralized by doubling the letter: pp. for. More-than-one-letter abbreviations are pluralized by adding s: vols. for. The ending -es is used for contractions if it appears in the corresponding complete word: admones. for. Traditional exceptions: the plural of pta. is pts., that of cent. and cént. is cts., and that of Ud. or Vd. is Uds. or Vds.
Letter symbols such as those of chemical elements or measurement units are written following international conventions and do not require the abbreviation period: H, kg. For some notions, Spanish-specific symbols are used: O, sen.
Acronyms are written in all capitals and read by letters or as words. Some acronyms read as words are written as normal words, including proper names of more than four letters such as Unesco, Unicef or common nouns such as. Some acronyms read by letters may also be spelled according to their pronunciation:. Acronyms written in all capitals are not pluralized in writing, but they are pluralized in speech: las ONG 'the non-governmental organizations'.

Numerals

Numbers may be written in words or in figures.
For the decimal separator, the comma and the point are both accepted ; the decimal comma is preferred in Spain, Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Paraguay, Peru, and Uruguay, but the decimal point is preferred in Mexico, the Dominican Republic, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama, Puerto Rico, and Venezuela. Both marks are used in Bolivia, Costa Rica, Cuba, and El Salvador.
For the thousands separator, the currently standard mark is the thin space. Formerly, the point was sometimes used, but now it is not recommended.
When written in words, numbers up to 30 are nowadays written as a single word, e.g.,. The corresponding ordinal numbers may be written as a single word or separately, e.g. or . Numbers more than 30 are usually written separately, e.g.,, but one-word spellings such as, are also accepted by the current Ortografía.
Whole hundreds are also written as single words, e.g..
Fractionary numbers such as are written as a single word.
Daytime is written in the 24-hour format, using the colon or the point. Dates are expressed in the day-month-year format, with the following options possible: 8 de mayo de 2015; 8-5-2015; 8-5-15; 8/5/2015; 8.5.2015; 8-V-2015. Leading zeros in the day and the month are not used, except in computerized or bank documents.
Roman numerals are used for centuries and for regnal numbers. Roman or Arabic numerals may be used for historical dynasties ; volumes, chapters, or other parts of books ; celebrations. Roman numerals are typeset in small capitals if they would not be capitalized when written in words.

History

The Royal Spanish Academy has reformed the orthographic rules of Spanish several times.
In Old Spanish, was used to represent the voiceless palatal sound , while represented the voiced palatal . With the changes of sibilants in the 16th century, the two sounds merged as , and the letter was chosen for the single resulting phoneme in 1815. This results in some words that originally contained now containing, most easily seen in the case of those with English cognates, such as ejercicio, "exercise". When Cervantes wrote Don Quixote he spelled the name in the old way, but modern editions in Spanish spell it with. For the use of in Mexico—and in the name Name of Mexico itself—see below.
The letter —which was first used in Old Spanish—is now obsolete in Spanish, having merged with in a process similar to that of and. Old Spanish,, became modern,,.
Words formerly spelled with or are now written with and . The sequences and do not occur in modern Spanish except some loanwords:,, ; some borrowed words have double spellings: /. A notable case is the word used in biochemistry, meaning "enzyme", as different from meaning "on", "over" or "on top of" something.
The old spellings with,, and remained in use until the eighteenth century. They were replaced by,, and, respectively in 1726. and continued to be used in some words due to their etymology, but this usage was largely reduced during the 1860—1880s, so these words became and. The letter was replaced by in 1815, although word-final remained until 1832. The combinations and were originally used only in a few etymological cases and also in diminutives ; in the Ortografía of 1815, and were replaced by and in some words but by and in other words ; the Diccionario of 1817 used mostly and but and word-initially ; in the Diccionario of 1832, and in words that did not have g in Latin were changed to, , but word-initial unetymological and remained; the Diccionario of 1837 stated explicitly that from then on, and were to be written only in words where they are justified by etymology.
Old Spanish used to distinguish /s/ and /z/ between vowels, and it distinguished them by using for the former and for the latter, e.g. and . In orthography, the distinction was suppressed in 1763.
Words spelled in modern Spanish with, were written with, up until 1815. In some words, was written , and was written . To distinguish pronounced and, sometimes was used for the latter, e.g., .
In 1726, most double consonants were simplified —but the of a prefix before the of a root was differentiated to in 1763. Also, the Graeco-Latin digraphs,, and were reduced to,, and, respectively. This was mostly done in 1754, but some exceptions persisted until 1803.
An earlier usage had as a word initial. It is only maintained in the archaic spelling of proper names like Yglesias or Ybarra. Although the RAE has always used the word-initial I as needed, the use of Y is occasionally found in handwriting and inscriptions up to the middle of the 19th century. The usage of for the vowel in words of Greek origin was abolished in 1754. The usage of in non-word-final diphthongs was abolished in 1815.
In early printing, the long s was a different version of used at the beginning or in the middle of a word. In Spain, the change to use the familiar round s everywhere, as in the current usage, was mainly accomplished between the years 1760 and 1766; for example, the multi-volume España Sagrada made the switch with volume 16.
From 1741 to 1815, the circumflex was used over vowels to indicate that preceding and should be pronounced /k/ and /ks/ respectively and not /tʃ/ and /x/, e.g.,.
The use of accent marks in printing varies by period, due to reforms successively promulgated by the Spanish Royal Academy. In early RAE publications, the acute accent was used extensively, although it was not used in paroxytones with two or more consonants after the stressed vowel, in most two-syllable paroxytones, and in some other words. In the Orthographía of 1741, the default stress is defined as paroxytone in words ending in,,, or, and in verbal forms ending in, and as oxytone in words ending in,, or other consonants. Since the Ortografía of 1754, the default stress is defined as paroxytone in words ending in vowels and oxytone in words ending in consonants, with some grammar-based exceptions, such as [|differential accents], plurals ending in, and verbal forms ending in or ; but other words ending in or were accented according to the general rule: capitan, jóven, demas, mártes. In 1880, the rules were simplified: grammatical considerations were no longer taken into account, except for differential accents. As a result, many words spelled previously without the accent gained it. These include words with final stress ending in -n ; words ending in which are not plurals ; verbs in the imperfect tense ; the possessives mío and mía and the word. On the other hand, some words lost their accent mark, e.g. →, →. Meanwhile, one-letter words other than the conjunction y—namely the preposition a and the conjunctions e, o, and u —were written with the grave accent in early RAE publications and with the acute accent from 1741 to 1911. The accent-marked infinitives such as,, began to outnumber the unaccented form around 1920, dropped the accent mark again in 1952, and regained it in 1959. Monosyllabic preterite verb forms such as and were written with accent marks before 1952.
The Ortografía 1754 and later editions also stated that surnames ending in -ez are not accented, though pronounced as paroxytones, e.g. Perez, Enriquez. The Prontuario 1853 and later editions did not mention surnames ending in -ez explicitly, but stated that oxytone surnames are accented except when homonymous to nouns, adjectives, geographical names, or verb infinitives. The Gramática 1870 stated that surnames ending in consonant and traditionally written without the accent are sometimes pronounced as paroxytones and sometimes as oxytones and recommends following the general rule for accentuation of surnames. The Gramática 1880 follows the general rule for accentuation of surnames: Enríquez, Fernández.
Since 1952, the letter is no longer considered an interruption between syllables, so the spellings such as,, became,,. The spelling was not changed, as pronouncing this word with a diphthong came to be considered the norm.
History of differential accents:

Ortografía 1754: dé, sé, sí.
Ortografía 1763: dé, sé, sí, él, mí.
The word tú is accented in the Diccionario since 1783.
Accented interrogatives appear in the Diccionario from 1817.
The word té is accented in the Diccionario from 1832; the accent disappeared after 1880 and reappeared in 1925.
The word más is accented in the Prontuario since 1853.
The Prontuario 1853 also added luégo and the verb forms éntre, pára, sóbre; the Gramática 1870 also added nós, and the musical notes mí, lá, sí. These accents were abolished by the Gramática 1880.
The Gramática 1870 also mentions the obsolete pronoun ál, which is also mentioned in the Diccionario since 1869.
The demonstrative pronouns éste, ése, aquél appear accented since the Prontuario 1853. However, the norms of 1952 stated that they may be not accented except in the case of ambiguity and also extended the possibility of accentuating to other similar words such as otro, algunos, pocos, muchos; this extension was abolished by the revision of 1959.
The adverb sólo is mentioned by the Prontuario 1853, but not by the Gramática 1870. The Gramática 1880 states that the word is accented "by the common usage". The norms of 1952 made the accent on sólo mandatory, but their revision of 1959 stated the accent in sólo is not normally needed, but can be used in the cases of ambiguity. The Ortografía 1999 states that the accent in sólo may be used, but it is necessary only in the cases of ambiguity. The Ortografía 2010 recommends not to accent the demonstratives and solo, but the DLE 2014 states that they may be accented in cases of ambiguity.
Additionally, the words and were originally not distinguished, but they appear in the Prontuario 1853 as áun and aún. Since the Gramática 1880, they are spelled aun and aún.

The names of numbers in the upper teens and the twenties were originally written as three words, but nowadays they are spelled as a single word. For the numbers from 21 to 29, the "fused" forms are accepted since 1803 and became common over the second half of the 19th century. For those from 16 to 19, the one-word forms became accepted in 1925 and took the lead in the 1940s. The Diccionario panhispánico de dudas labeled the separate spelling as obsolete. Fusing of number-names above 30 is rare, but accepted by the DPD 2005 and the Ortografía 2010 besides the usual separate spelling:,.
In the 18th century, the letter was used in a few loanwords and also in the word kalendario ; however, the first edition of the Diccionario de la lengua castellana already spelled calendario. The fourth edition of the Diccionario de la lengua castellana stated that may be in any case replaced by or and did not give any words beginning with, while still including the letter in the alphabet. In the eighth edition of the Ortografía de la lengua castellana, the letter was deleted from the Spanish alphabet. However, the letter was reinstated in the fourth edition of the Prontuario de ortografía de la lengua castellana, and its use in loanwords was reallowed.
The letter was formerly considered unneeded for writing Spanish. Previous RAE orthographies did not include in the alphabet and restricted its use to foreign proper names and Visigothic names from Spanish history. However, in the Ortografía of 1969, RAE included into the Spanish alphabet, allowing its use in loanwords.
In 1999, the written accent was added to a few words ending on the stressed diphthong au or eu: became. Before 1999, the combinations of accented verb forms with enclitic pronouns conserved the written accent, but now they do not if the general rules of accentuation do not require it: → , → .

Reform proposals

In spite of the relatively regular orthography of Spanish, there have been several initiatives to simplify it further. Andrés Bello succeeded in making his proposal official in several South American countries, but they later returned to the standard set by the Real Academia Española.
Another proposal, Ortografía R̃asional Ispanoamerikana, remained a curiosity.
Juan Ramón Jiménez proposed changing and to and, but this is only applied in editions of his works or those of his wife, Zenobia Camprubí.
Gabriel García Márquez raised the issue of reform during the first International Conference of the Spanish Language held in Zacatecas in 1997, most notoriously advocating for the suppression of, which is mute in Spanish, but, despite his prestige, no serious changes were adopted.
The Academies, however, from time to time have made minor changes in the orthography.
A Mexican Spanish convention is to spell certain indigenous words with rather than the that would be the standard spelling in Spanish. This is generally due to the origin of the word containing the voiceless postalveolar fricative sound or another sibilant that is not used in modern standard Spanish. The most noticeable word with this feature is Name of Mexico. The Real Academia Española recommends this spelling. The American Spanish colloquial term chicano is shortened from mechicano, which uses in place of the of rural Mexican Spanish.

Punctuation

Punctuation in Spanish is generally similar to punctuation in English and other European languages, but has some differences.
Spanish has the unusual feature of indicating the beginning of an interrogative or exclamatory sentence or phrase with inverted variants of the question mark and exclamation mark, respectively. Most languages that use the Latin alphabet use question and exclamation marks at the end of sentences and clauses. These inverted forms appear additionally at the beginning of these sentences or clauses. For example, the English phrase "How old are you?" has just the final question mark, while the Spanish equivalent, ¿Cuántos años tienes? begins with an inverted question mark.
The inverted question and exclamation marks were gradually adopted following the Real Academia's recommendations in the second edition of the Ortografía de la lengua castellana in 1754. Originally, the usage of inverted marks at the beginning was recommended only for large sentences, but the Gramática of 1870 made them mandatory for all interrogative or exclamatory sentences.
The inverted question and exclamation marks may be used at the beginning of a clause in the middle of a sentence, for example: Si no puedes ir con ellos, ¿quieres ir con nosotros?.
Sentences that are interrogative and exclamative at the same time may be written with two signs on each side: ¿¡...!? or ¡¿...?! or with one sign on each side: ¡...? or ¿...!
However, parenthesized signs to show doubt or surprise are written as single signs: . Doubtful dates may be written with single or double signs: 1576? or ¿1576?
The period indicates the end of the sentence.
The comma is used for separating appositions, subordinate clauses, interjections, tags in tag questions, vocatives, and discursives. It is also used in enumerations, but the serial comma is not used in Spanish: España, Francia y Portugal. There are some cases in which the comma is used after a coordinating conjunction, such as complex sentences. Circumstantial complements are usually not separated by a comma.
The semicolon is used for a more significant pause then the comma. It may mean an intermediate division between the comma and the period or separate parts of a sentence which already contain commas.
The colon is used for generalizing words before enumerations, for exemplifications, before the direct speech. Sometimes it can be used for juxtaposing clauses, after discursives, and in titles of the type "general: special". The colon is the standard mark in Spanish for addressing people in letters ; using the comma in this case is considered nonstandard.
The parentheses are used to include parenthetical information. When an entire sentence is parenthesized, the period is placed after the parentheses: .
The square brackets are used for writing editor's words inside citations and instead of parentheses inside parentheses.
The dash may be used to write direct speech in dialogues, as a quotation dash. Two dashes can sometimes introduce parenthetical constructions. The dash can also be used as a marker in enumerations. The combination "period+dash" may be used to separate the name of the topic and other information, or to separate characters' names and their lines in theatrical works.
The quotation marks are used in three styles: angled quotation marks for the outer level, double quotation marks for the inner level, single quotation marks for the third level. This is the system preferred in Spain, whereas Hispanic American publications often do not use the angled quotation marks. When a closing quotation mark occurs together with another punctuation mark, it is placed after the quotation mark.
The ellipsis is used for marking a sudden pause or suspension in thought and for incomplete citations. The combination "ellipsis+period" is simplified to the ellipsis, but the abbreviation point remains before the ellipsis. When an ellipsis occurs together with another punctuation mark, then the comma, the semicolon, and the colon are placed after the ellipsis, but other punctuation marks may be placed before or after the ellipsis depending on the structure of the sentence.

Arabic alphabet

In the 15th and 16th centuries, dialectal Spanish was sometimes written in the Arabic alphabet by Moriscos. This form of writing is called aljamiado.