Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Spain & Spanish-related articles


 * The initial content list follows that of Manual of Style/France and French-related

The purpose of this supplementary manual is to create guidelines for editing articles in the English-language Wikipedia which relate to Hispanic cultures or the Spanish language to conform to a neutral encyclopedic style and to make things easy to read by following a consistent format. The following rules do not claim to be the last word. One way is often as good as another, but if everyone does it the same way, Wikipedia will be easier to read and use, not to mention easier to write and edit. This manual is open to all proposals, discussion, and editing.

General rules
The most general rule of the Wikipedia is that editors should use the most common form of the name or expression used in English (WP:ENGLISH). There are however many cases in which this rule is difficult to put into practice. When giving a parenthetical Spanish expression after an English word, editors may use where "word" is the Spanish word. Example: Civil Guard (Guardia Civil).

Other Spanish words or phrases should use, thus: , which renders as Guardia Civil.

Orthography
In general, when quoting Spanish words or names, spelling (orthography), including punctuation, capitalization, and use of accents, should be modernized. How to modernize Spanish, along with how to determine if modernization is needed, are complicated topics, and expert assistance may be necessary. It should be kept in mind that just as many English speakers cannot spell correctly, many Spanish speakers do not know the rules for correct spelling and accent use.

Details of the rules governing orthography do not change frequently, but they are not set in stone either. The Royal Spanish Academy, a body with no English-language equivalent, has the legal authority to specify what is and what is not "correct" in Spanish, and occasionally it makes changes in Spanish orthography, as for example dropping of the accents on fui and fue. Their Diccionario de la lengua española should be consulted on questions of spelling, and their | Ortografía de la lengua española is authoritative.

Accent marks
Modern Spanish uses only the acute accent, over any vowel: á é í ó ú. In the past, accents were sometimes omitted from capital letters; however, current practice, which the Academy recommends, is to use them on all capitals Á, É, Í, Ó, Ú.

The accent mark in Spanish has an important function: it marks the stressed or "accented" syllable in a word. It is also used to distinguish homonyns, such as si (if) and sí (yes).

The use of accent marks in Spanish, except for capital letters, is not optional. They follow rules. A word that should have an accent mark but does not is misspelled, and a Spanish-language spell checker will flag it as an error. Sometimes omission of an accent mark, or addition of a superfluous one, can change meaning significantly: hablo (I speak), habló (he/she/it/you spoke).

The dieresis—¨—is used only on the vowel u and only after g (verGÜENza); it is not an accent mark, and has a quite different function. (It indicates the pronunciation of the g it follows.) It has no effect on alphabetizacion of the u. Likewise, the ~ is used in Spanish only over n, forming ñ (maÑAna), and the Spanish Academy defines ñ as a separate letter, not a variety of n. (Until the advent of computers in the later 20th century, the Spanish Academy considered ch and ll to be single letters, alphabetized after c and l.)

Function of accent marks in Spanish
In every word with a written accent mark, the syllable with it is the stressed or tonic syllable: haBLÓ, PÁjaro, naCIÓN. There are no exceptions.

Beyond this, the accent mark serves two quite different and somewhat confusing functions.

To mark the stressed syllable
In Spanish, when determining word stress, one looks at a syllable's position in relation to the end of the word. Note that the stress of a word in Spanish, such as constituCIÓN, often is different from the stress of the cognate (related) word in English: constiTUtion.

The Spanish Academy, in the early 19th century, set rules for the use of the accent as a marker of syllable stress. There are three rules, unchanged for some 200 years:
 * 1) Words that end in a vowel, n, or s are stressed on the next-to-last syllable: CAsa, MUro, CANtan.
 * 2) Words that end in any other letter are stressed on the last syllable: paRED, reLOJ, efiCAZ.
 * 3) Any word which breaks rule #1 or #2, including all words not stressed on the last or the next-to-last syllable, must have a written accent mark to indicate which syllable is stressed: PÁjaro, bendiCIÓN, inSÓlito.''

For the reader, the above rules are an infallible guide to syllable stress in Spanish pronunciation. Running the rules backwards, if one knows a word's pronunciation, from it one can determine if the word when written does or does not have an accent mark indicating the stressed syllable.

Note that some words will have a written accent mark on the singular, but not on the plural, or vice versa. For example, the singular donación (donation, do-na-CIÓN) has a written accent mark, but the plural donaciones (do-na-CIO-nes) does not. This is not considered to be a change in spelling or an irregularity; it is a consequence of the fact that the plural is a syllable longer. The singular "needs" a written accent mark to show that the stress breaks rule #1, indicating stress on the next-to-the-last syllable for words ending in n. In the plural, the word stress now follows the default rule of stress on the next-to-the-last syllable, so the written accent mark is not necessary (and would be wrong to use).

A written accent mark sometimes distinguishes one verb form from another: CANto, "I sing"; canTÓ "he/she/it/you sang". This reflects in writing the fact that the stressed syllable is different in these two verb forms.

To distinguish homonyms
In English, a word, such as spring, may have more than one meaning. The same is true in Spanish. These are called homonyms.

(In English a word, without changing the spelling, can have different pronunciations depending on its meaning: the verb deSERT is stressed on the last syllable, the noun DESert on the first syllable; when abuse is a noun it rhymes with loose, and if a verb it rhymes with booze. These are called heteronyms. In Spanish this is not allowed to happen; given a word's spelling, it must always be pronounced the same way, no matter what it means.)

The Spanish Academy decided to use the accent mark to distinguish certain homonyms, frequently different parts of speech. tú, subject pronoun, "you"; tu, adjective, "your". él, subject pronoun, "he" or "it"; el, article, "the". The number of these is small and a full treatment may be found at es:Acento diacrítico.

As always, the written accent mark, if there is one, comes on the stressed syllable of the word: CUÁNdo. The difference is that these words do not require the written accent to indicate the stressed syllable: CUANdo is stressed exactly the same with or without the accent mark.

Dividing a word into syllables
Discussions of word stress and the rules for use of written accent marks depend on the syllables of a word. Spanish's rules for dividing a word into syllables are different than those of English.


 * 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. For example, in the English word en-e-my, the n ends the first syllable. In the cognate word in Spanish, e-ne-mi-go, the n is not part of the first but instead begins the second syllable. In English, one could use a hyphen to divide the word "enemy" after the n: en-e-my. In Spanish, the hyphen is permitted only after ene-mi-go.
 * 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 after a consonant can begin a new syllable in prefixed or compound words: sub-ra-yar, ciu-dad-re-a-le-ño.
 * 3) When two vowels come together without an intervening consonant, the vowels are in different syllables, that is to say, the syllable division comes between the vowels: pa-e-lla, co-rre-o. Exception: i and u will combine with any vowel to form a diphthong if they are adjacent: puen-te, bue-no, sie-rra, pei-ne, fuis-te. If they are not to combine, a written accent mark is put on the i or u, indicating that there is no diphthong: ra-íz, Ra-úl, o-í-do.
 * 4) Note that the consonant h, being silent in modern Spanish, does not prevent otherwise adjacent vowels from combining to form a diphthong. Desahucio (eviction, de-SAHU-cio) is a three-syllable word, where sahu is pronounced with the diphthong au. Búho (owl, BU-ho) is a two-syllable word, as is luna (moon, LU-na). The n in luna prevents the u and a from combining. The h does not prevent the u and o from combining, so an accent is added to the ú to indicate that they do not combine.

Ligatures
Ligatures are typographical combinations of adjacent letters, such as æ. Spanish does not use ligatures.

Sorting
In current Spanish, the only difference from the sorting of English is that the ñ is a separate letter, following n and before o.

Accent marks (áéíóúÁÉÍÓÚ) do not affect sorting, nor does the diaeresis (the two superscript dots) used over ü and Ü in a few words such as lingüística (linguistics). Such words are filed as if the written accent or diaeresis were not present.

Before 1994, the former letters ch and ll were sorted separately. That is to say, in a dictionary, words beginning with ch were in a separate section following words beginning with c. The same for ll and l. This made computerized sorting complicated. In 1994 the Royal Spanish Academy said they should be interfiled with other words beginning with c or l. In 2010, ch and ll were officially changed by the Academy from being single letters; they are now double letters.

Treating the Ñ as a separate letter from the N, sorted separately, is also a complication, though a less serious one as it does not need to pretend that two letters are one. That Spanish, and only Spanish, has the Ñ is sometimes treated in Spain as a national treasure, something to be proud of, that makes Spain España.

Capitalization
Follow the capitalization of the text being quoted (unless it is mistaken according to Spanish rules). Spanish uses capital letters significantly less than English. While proper nouns are capitalized, adjectives derived from them are not: español, irlandés, neoyorquino (Spanish or Spaniard, Irish or an Irish person, New Yorkish or a New Yorker). In names of books or artistic works, only the first word and proper nouns are capitalized: Por quién doblan las campanas, For Whom the Bell Tolls. ("Quién" has a written accent because the context is interrogative: "Ask not, for whom the bell tolls.")

Naming conventions
See articles Spanish naming customs, Hispanic American naming customs

The patronymic and matronymic
Although there is great variety, especially outside of Spain, Spanish personal names customarily consist of a single first name, the last name of the father (patronymic), and the last name of the mother (matronymic). There may be y, de, or another word or words before either of the surnames. Thus, with Luis de Góngora y Argote, Góngora is the patronymic, and Argote the matronymic. The article would be alphabeticized under g.

When the paternal surname is common, like "García" or "Rodríguez," the person may be referred to in speech and writing by the maternal surname: Federico García Lorca is called "Lorca," and Diego Rodríguez de Silva y Velázquez is called "Velázquez." The maternal surname (apellido materno) or matronymic is generally not used in titles per MIDDLES but is used in article lead per WP:FULLNAME.

Note that Hispanic names should never be alphabetized by the maternal surname. Although Spanish poet and playwright Federico García Lorca is usually referred to as "Lorca," and not "García Lorca" and certainly not "García," he must be alphabetized under g. In an index, he would be "García Lorca, Federico," and never "Lorca, Federico García." A redirect to the correct form is helpful.

A good place for help in indexing Spanish names of people is a Spanish-language encyclopedia, like the Encyclopedia Espasa.

Geographical names and Administrative divisions
See List of English exonyms, Category:Geography of Spain, Category:Populated places in Spain by province

Catalonia, Valencia and Balearics
Spanish exonyms are currently used for some very well known toponyms such as Alicante and Ibiza. Catalan/Valencian endonyms are generally used for less known places. See List of Spanish exonyms for Catalan toponyms
 * See Category:Geography of Catalonia, Category:Geography of the Valencian Community, Category:Geography of the Balearic Islands

Basque country
Category:Geography of the Basque Country

Puerto Rico
When referring to the barrios of Puerto Rico use the word "barrio" in preference to the English "ward", except when quoting an English-language source or discussing the alternate usages. (See discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Puerto Rico.)

Spanish names in USA-related articles
See WikiProject Puerto Rico/Style guide

Pronunciation
Per WP:PRON, Spanish pronunciation is given in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). Help:IPA/Spanish provides a guide for editors and readers on Spanish IPA transcriptions. The first transcription should be bracketed within so that readers can be directed to Help:IPA/Spanish.