Spanish Punctuation and Capitalisation

Spanish and English share the same letters, but they disagree about almost everything you do around them. The differences are small individually and glaring in the mass: a page of Spanish looks subtly wrong to an English eye, and a page of English looks subtly wrong to a Spanish one. Here is the full set of rules an English speaker keeps getting wrong.

The opening ¿ and ¡ are compulsory

The famous upside-down marks are not optional flourishes. Every written question opens with ¿ and closes with ?; every exclamation opens with ¡ and closes with !. You always need both marks, the opening and the closing.

¿Cómo estás? (How are you?)
¡Qué frío hace! (It's so cold!)

Why does Spanish open a question in advance? Because Spanish word order often gives no early warning. English usually flags a question at the first word ("Are you...", "Where..."), but Spanish keeps the same order for statement and question: Vienes mañana (You're coming tomorrow) and ¿Vienes mañana? (Are you coming tomorrow?) differ only in the marks and the tone. The opening ¿ tells the reader, before they start, to read the whole clause as a question. It is a real reading aid.

They open at the start of the question, not the sentence

The opening mark hugs the question or exclamation itself, which is not always the first word of the sentence. Whatever comes before it stays outside:

Si vienes, ¿me avisas? (If you come, will you let me know?) - the si clause is a statement, so it sits outside.
Pedro, ¡ven aquí! (Pedro, come here!) - the name is a direct address, so the ¡ starts at ven.

Stacking for strong feeling

A sentence that is both a question and an exclamation stacks the marks, opening with both and closing with both:

¡¿Qué dices?! (What are you saying?!)

Lowercase where English capitalises

Spanish is far stingier with capital letters. As a rule, only proper nouns proper and the first word of a sentence take a capital. That means a whole list of words English capitalises stay lowercase in Spanish:

Days of the week: lunes, martes, miércoles.
Months: enero, febrero, marzo.
Languages and nationalities, whether adjective or noun: hablo español, soy inglés, un amigo francés.
Religions and their followers: es católico, una familia musulmana.
Compass directions: el norte, el sur.

The country stays capitalised (España, Francia); the language and the nationality drawn from it do not. And in a title, only the first word takes a capital (plus any proper nouns inside it): the novel Cien años de soledad, the film El laberinto del fauno.

The comparison at a glance

Feature	Spanish	English
Question marks	¿...? (both)	...?
Exclamation marks	¡...! (both)	...!
Days / months	lunes, enero	Monday, January
Languages / nationalities	español, un francés	Spanish, a Frenchman
Religions	católico	Catholic
Directions	norte	North
Book / film titles	Cien años de soledad	One Hundred Years of Solitude
Decimal separator	3,5	3.5
Thousands separator	1.000 or 1 000	1,000
Letter greeting	Estimada señora:	Dear Madam,
Accents on capitals	Ángel	(no accents)

Numbers: the comma and the point swap

Spanish reverses the English number punctuation, which quietly ruins many a copied figure:

The decimal separator is a comma: 3,5 means three point five.
The thousands separator is a full stop or a space: one thousand is 1.000 or 1 000.

So a price reads 1.250,75 euros where English writes 1,250.75. Read 2,5 as two and a half, never as two and a half thousand.

Letters and emails: a colon, not a comma

Where English opens a letter with a comma after the greeting, Spanish uses a colon:

Estimada señora: (Dear Madam,)
Querido Juan: (Dear Juan,)

The body then starts on the next line, exactly as in English, but that colon is the correct mark and a comma looks like a translation slip.

Dialogue: the raya, and this site's convention

Traditional Spanish opens a line of speech with the raya, a long dash, rather than quotation marks:

No vengo - dijo ella.

In formal print, quoted words often take the comillas angulares « » rather than the English " ". You will meet both in Spanish books. On this site we use ordinary quotation marks for dialogue, because they read clearly on screen and match the rest of our pages, but it is worth recognising the raya and the angular quotes when you meet them in the wild.

A few smaller differences

usted abbreviates to Ud. or Vd.; its plural ustedes to Uds. or Vds.
señor shortens to Sr., señora to Sra., señorita to Srta.
The accent stays on a capital letter: it is Ángel, not "Angel", and Álvaro, not "Alvaro". Software that drops accents on capitals is wrong, not stylish.

Get these right and your Spanish stops looking like English wearing a disguise. Open your questions in advance, keep your Mondays and your months small, comma your decimals, colon your letters, and leave the accents on the capitals where they belong.

Add the opening mark: 'Cómo estás?' (opening question mark)
Correct the capital: 'Hablo Español.' The language should be: (languages stay lowercase)
Correct the capital: 'Nos vemos el Lunes.' The day should be: (days stay lowercase)
Correct the capital: 'Mi cumpleaños es en Enero.' The month should be: (months stay lowercase)
Add the opening mark: 'Qué frío!' (opening exclamation mark)
Write the number three point five in Spanish digits: (decimal comma)
Correct the greeting punctuation: 'Estimada señora,' should end with: (colon after the greeting)
Keep the accent on the capital: the name Ángel is written: (accents stay on capitals)

Pick the right one

0/6

Choose the correct Spanish form.

I speak French: Hablo .
Which shows the opening mark in the right place?
One thousand written in Spanish:
The abbreviation of señor:
A strong question with both marks stacked:
He is Catholic: Es .

Frequently asked questions

Why does Spanish put an upside-down ¿ at the start of a question?

Because Spanish word order often gives no early warning that a question is coming. In English, an inverted auxiliary or a wh-word flags a question at once: 'Are you...', 'Where...'. Spanish frequently keeps the same word order for a statement and a question, so Vienes mañana and ¿Vienes mañana? differ only in punctuation and intonation. The opening ¿ warns the reader in advance to read the whole clause with a rising, questioning tone. It is a genuine reading aid, not decoration, which is why it is compulsory in careful writing even though people drop it in quick texts.

Do days and months really stay lowercase in Spanish?

Yes. Days of the week (lunes, martes), months (enero, febrero) and the seasons all take a small letter unless they begin a sentence. So you write Nos vemos el lunes and Mi cumpleaños es en enero. The same goes for languages and nationalities used as adjectives or nouns: hablo español, soy inglés, un amigo francés. Only proper nouns proper, such as a country (España) or a person (María), keep the capital. English capitalises all of these; Spanish treats them as ordinary common nouns, so the small letter is correct, not careless.

Where does the opening question mark go if the question is not the whole sentence?

It opens at the start of the actual question, not the start of the sentence. If a sentence begins with something that is not part of the question, that part stays outside the marks: Si vienes, ¿me avisas? (If you come, will you let me know?). The name in a direct address also sits outside: Pedro, ¡ven aquí! The rule is that the ¿ or ¡ hugs the question or exclamation itself, so the reader starts the questioning tone at the right word.

How do Spanish numbers punctuate decimals and thousands?

Spanish reverses the English convention. The decimal separator is a comma, so 3,5 means three point five, and the thousands separator is a full stop or a thin space, so one thousand is 1.000 or 1 000. A price might read 1.250,75 euros where English writes 1,250.75. This matters when you copy numbers between languages: read 2,5 as two and a half, not two and a half thousand. The International System actually recommends the space for thousands, which sidesteps the clash, but the comma decimal is standard across Spain and most of Latin America.