Spanish Grammar Conventions
Acronyms
Acronyms work slightly differently in Spanish compared to English. In English, once an acronym is defined, you can use the acronym by itself going forward. However, in Spanish, if the acronym originated from English, best practice is to include the full Spanish translation plus the English acronym each time, followed by "por sus siglas en inglés" to indicate it's an English acronym.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)
Centros para el Control y la Prevención de Enfermedades (CDC, por sus siglas en inglés)
This guide follows “Federal Plain Language Guidelines” by the Plain Language Action and Information Network (PLAIN).
Esta guía se adhiere a las “Pautas Federales de Lenguaje Simple” de la Red de Información y Acción en Lenguaje Simple (PLAIN, por sus siglas en inglés).
Capitalization
Capitalization rules differ between English and Spanish. In English, most words are capitalized in titles, proper nouns, etc. However, Spanish uses capital letters more sparingly.
In Spanish, capitalization is required in certain cases like:
The first word of titles and sentences
Manténgase en contacto con su seguro médico
People’s first and last names
Fernanda Williams, Greg Brown
Geographical places like countries, cities, continents, planets
Estados Unidos, California, Brooklyn, Asia, Júpiter
Holidays
Año Nuevo, Navidad
Acronyms
USCIS
Institutions
Ministerio de Diversidad y Género, Museo Nacional de Arte
However, Spanish does not require capital letters in some cases where English does:
Languages
español, chino, inglés,
Days of the week and months
lunes, martes, miércoles enero, febrero, marzo
Nationalities
latina/o americana/o, estadounidense
Religions
budismo, catolicismo, judaísmo
Punctuation
Punctuation rules are generally similar between English and Spanish, with some key differences to note.
Exclamation points: Spanish requires the inverted exclamation point ¡ at the beginning of a sentence, versus only at the end in English.
Question marks: Spanish requires the inverted question mark ¿ at the beginning of an interrogative sentence, versus only at the end in English.
Oxford commas: The comma before "and" or "or" in a list is typically not used in Spanish like it is in English (although debatable - search “Oxford comma controversy” for a fun rabbit hole)
Periods/commas with quotes: In English, punctuation goes inside the quotation marks, while in Spanish it always goes outside the closing quotation mark. e.g.: “El formulario mejoró mucho”, dijo un participante.
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