Spanish Grammar Conventions

Grammar conventions are the shared rules behind correct written Spanish: the articles that agree with nouns, the demonstratives that point things out, the consistent alphabet, and the accents and punctuation that carry meaning. Together they make Spanish one of the more predictable languages to read and write.

Much of that predictability comes from spelling. Spanish is close to phonetic, so once you know how its 27 letters map onto sounds, you can pronounce most new words on sight, and the Real Academia Española keeps those rules consistent across the Spanish-speaking world. The written accent adds precision on top: a single mark can separate one word from another, as in el (the) and él (he), or tú (you) and tu (your).

Other conventions have no direct English equivalent. Questions and exclamations open with inverted marks, ¿ and ¡, as well as closing with the usual ones, and the letter ñ counts as a letter in its own right. Articles and demonstratives, in turn, change form to match the gender and number of the noun they accompany.

This section links to a clear guide for each convention.

Articles and determiners - the definite and indefinite articles and how they agree with the noun.

Demonstratives - este, ese and aquel, and how they mark distance from the speaker.

The alphabet and spelling - the 27 letters, the letter ñ, and the spelling patterns that trip learners up.

Accents and punctuation - the accent mark, the tilde, and the inverted question and exclamation marks.