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From time to time I see pedantically wrong language in online forums and short messages, for example missing diacritics above letters, sometimes including the tilde above ñ. Also there are some places where a single Q appears, and I think it's a short form of que:

quiero saber l q ha pasado (I want to know what happened)

What difference may I anticipate between grammatically correct language and daily/casual typing?

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  • 2
    This could be an interesting question, but I suspect people is not paying attention to it because it is too broad to answer. Besides, there can be regional differences in the way people uses these abbreviations. I suggest to narrow the scope of the question and ask for specific texts you may have problems to understand. Nonetheless, I see that you got the meaning of your example sentence quite right.
    – Charlie
    Oct 1, 2018 at 8:04
  • I bet you could give yourself a crash course in internet abbreviations and sloppy writing by reading (a) La Tertulia (our chat area here at Spanish Language Beta) and Yahoo Respuestas. Oct 4, 2018 at 1:14
  • I wonder about that phrase "pedantically wrong." Do you really mean that? Oct 4, 2018 at 1:14
  • @aparente001 be pedantic = be strict about grammar
    – iBug
    Oct 4, 2018 at 2:55
  • Somehow related: How important are accents in written Spanish?
    – fedorqui
    Oct 4, 2018 at 13:38

1 Answer 1

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I will try to be concise but there are many changes ...

The most common changes:

  • The comma between the subject and the predicate:

    This error tends to mark, in some cases, a spoken pause, but it is necessary to remember that the punctuation marks do not correspond to the pauses that take place in the oral discourse.

    Example: "Todos los actores, tomaran una copa tras la función"

  • Queism (queismo): As well as dequeísmo is to add the preposition of when it has not to be(Me contó de que se iba a Córdoba), queism is the opposite, to omit (Me alegro que te hayan dado el trabajo.

  • Do not put accents on pronouns: We're not going to be theoretical, it's just a very common mistake

  • Abusive use of commas

  • the confusion between «a ver» and «haber»: This one in particular gives me a lot of revulsion, because I see it written very frequently and not only in those ways, but also in incorrect ways that are obvious and nobody cares.

  • **Forget the H and change the K for the C and the QU **

  • The correct use of «Ay!», «hay» and «ahí»: Very common especially in the smallest that only use the «hay».

  • Terms and abbreviations: Here I will point out, it is very common in internet texts or chats to abbreviate or simply to use fewer characters in a way that is understood, even though each word is misspelled.

These cases are many and I give you some examples:


  • Aki: aquí
  • Xq: porque
  • Nd: nada
  • Bn: bien
  • Gns: ganas
  • Jum: expresión que significa enfado
  • Qtpsa: ¿qué te pasa?
  • Tw: tweet
  • Fb: Facebook
  • Wp o wasa: Whatsapp
  • Wenas: buenas, hola
  • Ola ke ase: hola, ¿qué haces?
  • Xa, pa: para
  • +: más
  • -: menos
  • = : igual

This is only a few of them, there are more than i can remember.


  • Forget the ¿ at the begining of the question: Quite common - A que hora quedamos?


There are pretty more, but less common in my opinion.

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  • +1 Good start on this
    – iBug
    Oct 31, 2018 at 8:26
  • 1
    Grx= Gracias. Obviously always try to use the right grammar and spelling. :-)
    – DGaleano
    Oct 31, 2018 at 19:22

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