English vs. Spanish

People get pretty touchy about punctuation, so here's some extra help with that—especially if the Spanish punctuation rules have been hammered into your brain.

If you're an ELL who hasn't had a formal education in Spanish, it's a lot simpler. You have a clean slate. Like everyone else, just memorize where everything goes.

And the next time someone makes you feel bad about where you placed that comma, link them here. This section is even more proof about how arbitrary punctuation can be.

Questions Marks and Exclamation Points

In English, write one mark/point at the end of the question/exclamation only. In Spanish, start the question/exclamation with an inverted mark, and close it with a question exclamation mark. ______...

The Oxford Comma

In American English, write a comma before "and" and "or" when enumerating three of more items. In Spanish, don't. The Oxford (or "serial") comma doesn't exist in Spanish. ____________________ En in...

Quotation Marks

It's pretty simple. In English, use " " as quotation marks. In Spanish, use « ». ____________________ En español, se deben usar las comillas latinas o españolas: « ». EnglishSpanish"Hindi"...

Ellipses

When citing something that someone else said or wrote in English, write three dots with a space before, after, and between them if you want to omit part of the quotation (called ellipsis points). I...

Decimals and Thousands

Use a dot for decimals and a comma for thousands in English. Do the opposite in Spanish (for most but not all Spanish-speaking countries—Mexico is one exception). ____________________ En inglés...

Dialogues

In English, dialogues are written in quotation marks. In Spanish, the em dash (—) is used (not to be confused with the en dash, –). ____________________ Los diálogos se escriben entre comillas...