Periods and Commas

• In the Spanish language, the period, or el punto, is used in essentially the same way as it appears in English grammar. The major difference between the two languages for a period involves numerals. Spanish requires a period instead of a comma for large numbers. For example, $100,000 would be punctuated as follows: $100.000. The Spanish language uses the comma (la coma) to break off items in series similarly to English, with no comma between the last item and the y ("and").
  
  

Question Marks and Exclamation Points

• Question marks (los signos de interrogación) and exclamation points (los signos de exclamación) are used in the Spanish language to show great emotion. In punctuation, both marks can be found in front of the sentence and after the last word. Another major difference in Spanish punctuation is the placement of an additional question mark or exclamation point. In both instances, the first mark is always upside-down to indicate a question or interjection.
  
  

Quotation Marks

• The Spanish language uses sentence punctuation that goes outside the quote marks. For instance, "I want to play volleyball" would read this way in Spanish: "Quiero jugar el voleibol". The quotation marks are only used if one person is talking but not directly to another individual. Quotation marks are used in English to denote direct quotes, in conversation and also for emphasis, with the punctuation falling inside the quote marks.
  
  

Dashes

• When writing a conversation, it is important to distinguish the people who are talking so your reader can follow who is saying what. In English, this material is denoted by quotation marks, but the Spanish language uses a completely different quotation mark and system. Dashes or hyphens are called el guións. These marks indicate a change in speakers during a dialogue so the reader can attribute the right quotes to the right person.