Novels and other Literature

Question

I am in the middle of reading (trying to read is probably better) a spanish novel and I noticed that there are no quotations but there are a lot of dashes in the text. They seem to be put in places where quotations would normally be placed in an english novel to indicate a character speaking. Is it common to use that punctuation while writing in spanish? Or are the dashes there for another reason'

Answer 1

Ok, that makes A LOT of sense! Thank you!

Answer 2

Thanks for the help on how to get the punctuations on my computer! I'll definately use it!

Answer 3

Thank you very much! that helps a lot!

Answer 4

I know she didn't mention any hyphens. I'm just being pro-active, like, since many other people will be reading these posts, ya know'

Answer 5

Thanks, Motley, that was helpful.

The other one, in English, does not discuss the punctuation of quotations, and the English is poor.

Answer 6

This is for the español challenged

http://www.proz.com/translation-articles/articles/57/1/Spanish-punctuation

Answer 7

James,
I think you can find what you need here

http://www.elcastellano.org/esbpuntu.html

Answer 8

Windows machines are preset to replace a double hyphen (--) with an n-dash, and a triple hyphen (---|) with an m-dash. Much easier than using ALT commands.

And for the record, Katrina didn't say they were hyphens. She called them dashes.

I have never been instructed on how exactly to use this punctuation in Spanish. Could someone point me to some rules, or give examples of variations? And what about scare quotes?

Example in English:

"Where are you going'," she asked.
(Note the question mark, comma, and quotation mark.)

Answer 9

And, in case you're interested, these are NOT hyphens, but m-dashes (the n-dashes are for math symbols). You can type them directly with ALT+0151 in a Windows environment, or with option+hyphen in a Mac.

Answer 10

It is the standard punctuation in Spanish (unlike English) to separate between dialogs and comments.