page_title: Spanish orthography
section_title: Older conventions
hierarchical_section_title: Spanish orthography / Orthography / Older conventions
caption_attribution_description: Galego: Igrexa parroquial de Santiago de Parada, Nigrán, detalle, "YGLESIA DE REFVGIO 1835"
context_page_description: Spanish orthography is the orthography used in the Spanish language. The alphabet uses the Latin script. The spelling is fairly phonemic, especially in comparison to more opaque orthographies like English, having a relatively consistent mapping of graphemes to phonemes; in other words, the pronunciation of a given Spanish-language word can largely be predicted from its spelling and to a slightly lesser extent vice versa. Notable features of Spanish punctuation include the lack of the serial comma and the inverted question and exclamation marks: ⟨¿⟩ ⟨¡⟩.
  Spanish uses capital letters much less often than English; they are not used on adjectives derived from proper nouns and book titles capitalize only the first word.
  Spanish uses only the acute accent, over any vowel: ⟨á é í ó ú⟩. This accent is used to mark the tonic syllable, though it may also be used occasionally to distinguish homophones such as si and sí.
context_section_description: The Spanish Royal Academy has reformed the orthographic rules of Spanish many times.
  In Old Spanish, ⟨x⟩ was used to represent the voiceless palatal sound /ʃ/ (as in dixo 'he/she said'), while ⟨j⟩ represented the voiced palatal /ʒ/ (as in fijo 'son').  With the changes of sibilants in the 16th century, the two sounds merged as /ʃ/ (later to become velar /x/), and the letter ⟨j⟩ was chosen for the single resulting phoneme in 1815.  This results in some words that originally contained ⟨x⟩ now containing ⟨j⟩, most easily seen in the case of those with English cognates, such as ejercicio, "exercise". When Cervantes wrote Don Quixote he spelled the name in the old way (and English preserves the ⟨x⟩), but modern editions in Spanish spell it with ⟨j⟩. For the use of ⟨x⟩ in Mexico—and in the name México itself—see below.
  The letter ⟨ç⟩ (c-cedilla)—which was first used in Old Spanish—is now obsolete in Spanish, having merged with ⟨z⟩ in a process similar to that of ⟨x⟩ and ⟨j⟩. Old Spanish coraçon, cabeça, fuerça became modern corazón, cabeza, fuerza.
  Words formerly spelled with ⟨ze⟩ or ⟨zi⟩ (such as catorze, dezir, and vezino) are now written with ⟨ce⟩ and ⟨ci⟩ (catorce, decir, vecino, respectively).  The sequences ⟨ze⟩ and ⟨zi⟩ do not occur in modern Spanish except some loanwords: zeugma, zigurat, zipizape; some borrowed words have double spellings: zinc/cinc. A notable case is the word enzima used in biochemistry, meaning "enzyme", as different from encima meaning "on" or "over" something.
  The old spellings with ⟨ç⟩, ⟨ze⟩, and ⟨zi⟩ remained in use until the eighteenth century.  They were replaced by ⟨z⟩, ⟨ce⟩, and ⟨ci⟩, respectively in 1726. ⟨Ze⟩ and ⟨zi⟩ continued to be used in some words due to their etymology (e.g. zelo, zizaña), but this usage was largely reduced during the 1860—1880s, so these words became celo and cizaña. The letter ⟨x⟩ was replaced by ⟨j⟩ in 1815, although word-final ⟨x⟩ remained until 1832 (e.g. relox, now reloj). The combinations ⟨je⟩ and ⟨ji⟩ were originally used only in a few etymological cases (e.g. Jesús, Jeremías) and also in diminutives (pajita); after the reform of 1815, ⟨xe⟩ and ⟨xi⟩ were replaced by ⟨ge⟩ and ⟨gi⟩ in the Ortografía but by ⟨je⟩ and ⟨ji⟩ in the Diccionario; since 1832, the spelling was firmly established to be ⟨je⟩ and ⟨ji⟩. Also, unetymological spellings with ⟨ge⟩, ⟨gi⟩ (that is, words that did not have g in Latin) were changed to ⟨je⟩, ⟨ji⟩ (e.g. muger, from Latin mulier, became mujer).
  Old Spanish used to distinguish /s/ and /z/ between vowels, and it distinguished them by using ⟨ss⟩ for the former and ⟨s⟩ for the latter, e.g. osso ('bear') and oso ('I dare to'). In orthography, the distinction was suppressed in 1763.
  Words spelled in modern Spanish with ⟨cua⟩, ⟨cuo⟩ (e.g. cuando, cuatro, cuota) were written with ⟨qua⟩, ⟨quo⟩ up until 1815.
  In 1726, most double consonants were simplified (e.g. grammatica → gramática, addicion → adición)—but the ⟨m⟩ of a prefix before the ⟨m⟩ of a root was differentiated to ⟨n⟩ in 1763 (e.g. "commover → conmover"). And the Graeco-Latin digraphs ⟨ch⟩, ⟨ph⟩, ⟨(r)rh⟩ and ⟨th⟩ were reduced to ⟨c⟩, ⟨f⟩, ⟨(r)r⟩ and ⟨t⟩, respectively (e.g. christiano → cristiano, triumpho → triunfo, myrrha → mirra, theatro → teatro).
  An earlier usage had Y as a word initial I.
  It is only maintained in the archaic spelling of proper names like Yglesias or Ybarra.
  In early printing, the long s ⟨ſ⟩ was a different version of ⟨s⟩ used at the beginning or in the middle of a word.
  In Spain, the change to use a round s everywhere as in the current usage was mainly accomplished between the years 1760 and 1766; for example, the multi-volume España Sagrada made the switch with volume 16 (1762).
  From 1741 to 1815, the circumflex was used over vowels to indicate that preceding ⟨ch⟩ and ⟨x⟩ should be pronounced /k/ and /ks/ respectively and not /tʃ/ and /x/, e.g. exâctitud, patriarchâ.
  The use of accent marks in publishing varies with different historical periods, due mainly to reforms promulgated by the Spanish Royal Academy.  For example, many of the words that are today standa
caption: A church in Nigrán, marked as YGLESIA DE REFUGIO, "Sanctuary church".
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