It’s common in our line of work for people to have doubts regarding proper punctuation in lists in Spanish.
It’s important to keep certain principles in mind: the extent of the listed ideas and whether they represent marketing material or tables.
In addition to the Diccionario de la Real Academia Española, to which we constantly turn for [...]
Posts Tagged ‘punctuation’
Happy National Punctuation Day!
Thursday, September 24th, 2009Let us take this time to celebrate National Punctuation Day, wherein everyone must take a little extra time to focus on proper grammar usage and not fill the world with poor style and embarrassing mistakes. Visit the website to brush up on anything if you need to. Someday, I hope that we will live every [...]
Writing Years in Spanish
Friday, September 4th, 2009Continuing on the topic of writing dates in Spanish correctly, regarding the use of the article “el” (which includes the contraction “del“) before the expression of years, these are the proper protocols:
a) For years between 1 and 1100, it is common to use the article, at least in spoken Spanish: Los árabes invadieron la Península [...]
The Strange History of the Ampersand
Wednesday, August 26th, 2009The logogram on the left is ubiquitous and easily recognizable throughout the world; it’s “the and sign”. To professionals and lovers of linguistic trivia, it’s the “ampersand”.
What is less known is how it got to be to the place it is today. Here’s a brief history recapitulating the most important areas:
Its original form was based [...]
The Use of the Period in English and Spanish
Friday, July 3rd, 2009The period (full stop) is the punctuation mark that marks the grammatical and logical end of a sentence.
The main difference comes from its greatest use in English. In Spanish, the period generally signals a pause or separation; the relationship is generally expressed with the comma and the semicolon.
English uses the period before conjunctions, adverbs, or [...]
The Use of the Dash in English and Spanish
Friday, June 12th, 2009This punctuation mark is, in Spanish, the equivalent to parentheses, though it does have one function that differs: marking off asides that are suggestive, ironic, or emotional, and the effect is stylistic. It must always be placed at the end of the aside, even when it is the end of the sentence.
In English, a single [...]
Commas in English and Spanish
Monday, April 20th, 2009In English, we generally use a comma in front of the conjunctions “and” and “or”. The structures in English allow for us to skip the comma when working with other conjunctions. In certain sentences, the pause indicated by the comma will not be enough and a semi-colon must be used instead.
Subordinate adverbial clauses between two [...]
