How do you say punctuation in Spanish dictation?

Say the Spanish name of each mark, and expect to type the opening marks yourself. On a Mac set to Spanish, the closing question mark comes from the phrase signo de interrogación, which Apple's Spanish command table gives for ? ¹. Spanish questions also take an opening ¿, and that mark has no spoken command in Apple's table. In Microsoft Word, the same opening mark has a spoken name, signo de apertura de interrogación.

Spanish questions need two marks, and the Mac list gives only one

Spanish writes a question with two signs: an opening ¿ at the start of the sentence and a closing ? at the end ². Exclamations work the same way, with ¡ and !. Dictating only the closing phrase gives you a sentence that ends correctly and starts without its sign.

Apple's Spanish table gives the closing mark for questions and the curly quotation marks, with comillas de apertura for the opening quote and comillas de cierre for the closing one. It has no command for the opening ¿ ¹. The opening question mark is therefore the one mark you add by hand on the Mac.

Microsoft Word has spoken names for the opening marks

Microsoft's Dictate in Word table for Spanish lists both opening marks as spoken phrases. Signo de apertura de interrogación gives ¿, signo de apertura de exclamación gives ¡, and signo de interrogación gives ? ³. In Word, a question can be dictated in one pass: say the opening phrase, then the words of the question, then the closing phrase.

The two tables are separate lists from separate vendors, so a phrase that works in Word may not work in a Mac app, and the reverse. Check the output of your first question in each app before you dictate a long text.

Automatic punctuation on the Mac covers four Spanish variants

Mac Dictation also inserts some marks without a command. Apple's user guide says that it inserts commas, periods and question marks as you dictate, and that the Auto-punctuation setting in Keyboard settings turns this off ⁴. For Spanish, Apple's feature list includes four variants: Colombia, Mexico, Spain and United States ⁵.

Chile is not on that list. A Chilean writer should dictate a test paragraph and read the marks before relying on the automatic ones. Apple's user guide does not say whether the automatic question mark also adds the opening ¿, so check the first mark of every question as well as the closing one.

What to do when the marks come out wrong

1. Set the dictation language to Spanish for the variant you write in, because each language has its own command list. Apple describes switching the language you dictate in, or setting up several languages and switching between them, rather than recognizing two languages in one sentence ⁶.
2. Say signo de interrogación at the end of each question, and type ¿ at its start.
3. Type ¡ and ! by hand on the Mac, because the opening exclamation mark has no command in Apple's table.
4. Check quotation marks. Apple's table gives curly quotation marks, and some Spanish publications use guillemets (« »), so match the house style of the text you are writing.
5. Dictate one test sentence per mark in the language you chose, and read it before you dictate a whole document.

Spanish dictation is a command list, not a finished punctuation system

The spoken command decides the mark, and the language setting decides which command list applies. A Spanish writer who dictates in English, or who expects the English words "question mark" to give the Spanish sign, will get the wrong mark or no mark. The English commands are covered in our guide to dictation punctuation, and the wider set of languages is in our guide to dictation punctuation commands in other languages.

The commands do not show how accurately the software hears them. Test each phrase in a real sentence, because a clean command table can still produce a misheard word. Accent marks and the letter ñ are a separate problem, covered in our question on Spanish dictation accent marks, and our guide to Spanish speech to text covers recognition accuracy in more depth.

For the same marks in other languages, see the questions on French dictation punctuation and German dictation punctuation. For the English case, where the marks are added automatically, see the question on whether Mac dictation adds punctuation automatically. The general idea of spoken punctuation is in our glossary entry on spoken punctuation.

In short: say signo de interrogación for the closing ?, add the opening ¿ yourself on a Mac or say signo de apertura de interrogación in Word, and test each mark before you rely on it.