For what it’s worth, in “The Elements of Typographic Style”, Bringhurst states:

For Spanish, one kerns the combinations ’¿ and “¿.

He also references “Harts Rules for Compositors” (39th ed. 1983), which “includes a good, brief guide to hyphenation and punctuation rules for several European languages.”

Tad

In Spanish you do not use extra spacing like in French. Here’s the rules for the most common marks.

For quotation marks: Las comillas se escriben pegadas a la primera y la última palabra del período que enmarcan, y separadas por un espacio de las palabras o signos que las preceden o las siguen; pero si lo que sigue a las comillas de cierre es un signo de puntuación, no se deja espacio entre ambos. [Quotation marks are written attached to the first and last word of the marked text, and separated by a space between the words or signs that precede or follow them; but if what follows the closing quotation mark is a punctuation mark, no space is left between them]. (Source: DPD “comillas” 1)

Also, please note, the prefered order for quotation marks is first angular «», then curly double “”, and then curly simple ‘’. (So many programs seem to figure out that in French it’s «» and in German it’s „“ but they don’t get that in Spanish it should be «» as well ... ugh)

For periods: Se escribe sin separación de la palabra que lo precede y separado por un espacio de la palabra o el signo que lo sigue [Written without separation from the word which precedes it, and separated by a space from the word or sign which follows it] (Source. DPD “punto” 1). El punto se escribirá siempre detrás de las comillas, los paréntesis y las rayas de cierre [The period is written always after quotation marks, parentheses, and closing dashes] (Source: DPD “punto” 3.1). Si el punto de una abreviatura coincide con el punto de cierre del enunciado, solo debe escribirse un punto, nunca dos [If the period of an abbreviation coincides with a period closing a declarative statement, only one period should be written, never two] (Source: DPD “punto” 3.3).

For semicolons: Se escribe pegado a la palabra o el signo que lo precede, y separado por un espacio de la palabra o el signo que lo sigue [Written attached to the word or sign which precedes it, and separated by a space from the word or sign which follows it] (Source: DPD “punto y coma” 1)

There is no simple recommendation on the use of the hyphen, except that all examples have it pegged to the word before and after it (where there is a word before or after it, of course).

For dashes: Cuando se usan dos rayas (una de apertura y otra de cierre) para introducir un inciso dentro de un período más extenso, estas se escriben pegadas a la primera y a la última palabra del período que enmarcan, y separadas por un espacio de la palabra o signo que las precede o las sigue; pero si lo que sigue a la raya de cierre es otro signo de puntuación, no se deja espacio entre ambos [When two dashes are used (one opening and one closing) to introduce an aside within a larger stretch of text, they are written attached to the first and last word in the phrase which they mark, and separated by a space from the word or signs which precede or follow them; but if what follows a closing dash is another punctuation sign, no space is left between the two] (Source. DPD “raya” 1). There are some complicated exceptions, but basically, when used a list, it has a space and then the items. In scripts, it’s NAME.—Dialogue with no space on either side (and name in small caps)

For parenthesis: Los paréntesis se escriben pegados a la primera y la última palabra del período que enmarcan, y separados por un espacio de las palabras que los preceden o los siguen (hay algunas excepciones); pero si lo que sigue al signo de cierre de paréntesis es un signo de puntuación, no se deja espacio entre ambos [Parentheses are written attached to the first and lat word of the phrase they mark, and separated by a space from the words which precede or follow them (there are some exceptions); but if what follows the closing parenthesis is a punctuation mark, no space is left between them] (Source: “paréntesis” 1). EXCEPTIONS: Para introducir opciones en un texto. [...] los paréntesis que añaden segmentos van pegados a la palabra a la que se refieren. En este uso, el paréntesis puede alternar con la barra. [In order introduce options in a text … parentheses that add word fragments are attached to the word which they refer to. In this use, the slash may be used instead of the parenthesis] (Source: “paréntesis” 2.c). Para desarrollar las abreviaturas o reconstruir las palabras incompletas del texto original cuando se reproducen o transcriben textos, códices o inscripciones. Los elementos que se añaden van entre paréntesis y sin espacios de separación: Imp(eratori) Caes(ari). En estos casos se recomienda utilizar con preferencia los corchetes. [In order to explain abbreviations or reconstitute incomplete words from an original text when reproducing or transcribing texts, codices, or inscriptions. The added elements go between parentheses and with separating spaces: Imp(eratori) Caes(ari). In these cases, brackets are preferably used instead.] (Source: DPD “paréntesis” 2.d)

The slash has a variety of uses and depending on that use is either written with or without spaces:

Without: preposition substitution (1.a), multiple word options (1.b), certain abbreviations (1.c), dates (1.d), phonemic transcriptions (1.e), mathematics (1.i), and IT delimiters (1.j).
With: line breaks in quoted texts (1.f and 1.g), niche orthography uses (1.h)
(Source: DPD “barra” 1)

All other bars and slashes (collectively called “barras” in Spanish, and include \, |, ||, and //) use a single space on each side EXCEPT:
When marking a page break, space before the // with the number or folio attached to the double slash.
When separating a protocol from its address, there are no spaces with the double slash //
When used in computer systems, the backslash is used without spaces.

For the bracket: Los corchetes se escriben pegados a la primera y la última palabra del período que enmarcan, y separados por un espacio de las palabras o signos que los preceden o los siguen (hay algunas excepciones); pero si lo que sigue al corchete de cierre es un signo de puntuación, no se deja espacio entre ambos. [Brackets are written attached to the first and last word of the phrase they mark, and are separated by a space from the words or signs which precede or follow them (there are some exceptions); but if what follows the bracket is a punctuation mark, no space is written between them.] (Source: DPD “corchete” 1). Al desarrollar abreviaturas, no se deja espacio de separación ante los corchetes de apertura [In explaining abbreviations, no space is left before the opening brackets] (Source: DPD “corchete” 2.c).

For the comma: Se escribe pegada a la palabra o el signo que la precede y separada por un espacio de la palabra o el signo que la sigue [Written attached to the word or sign which precedes, and separated by a space from the word or sign which follows it] (Source: DPD “coma”).

That’s all the marks I can think of off the top of my head.

«El futuro es una línea tan fina que apenas nos damos cuenta de pintarla nosotros mismos». (La Luz Oscura, por Javier Guerrero)

Wow. As the typesetter of an academic journal on Spanish, I sure appreciate this wealth of information!

There are always a lot of quotations in this journal (in Spanish — figures...), and other than setting the hyphenation language, I paid no heed to any special rules. Consider this rectified from now on.

[deleted: double post]

Theunis, if I may ask, which journal do you typeset?

Honestly the differences between English and Spanish typesetting are pretty minimal (of course here I assume the primary language is English), the main one being the quotation marks which is only marginally followed in Latin America (which I think those users from or working out of there can attest to; here in Spain it depends, the more formal, there more likely it’s angular); and that punctuation goes outside of the quotation mark, which is a practice that is gaining traction in the English world, no doubt due to various factors including scientific and IT publication where having a comma in or out of a quotation may make a big difference, or just out of habit from programming, as well as influence from non-native writers publishing following the more logical system of other languages.

Another kern pair to watch out for in Spanish, depending on the descenders in a font is ¡y and ¡j (and possibly ¡g). These might need a little more space. Another interesting thing that doesn’t come up much... the Spanish !? or ¿¡ would be simple opening with one and closing the other, the order depending on the meaning and intended delivery of the sentence. No need for interrobang!

One other caveat that gets some typesetters: one used to never put accents (acute or diaeresis) on capital letters. This is now considered unstandard and discouraged by the RAE and so they should always have their accents (the Ñ was never effected by this). The main reason was due to line and character height, so with the tilde you see some interesting ways to smash it into the line hieght. With modern typography being almost entirely computer based, there’s no real technical limitation to putting the accents at full height.

And if you want to be oldfashioned radical, search and replace all the eñes with n-macrons (esp in sans text). (half joke)

«El futuro es una línea tan fina que apenas nos damos cuenta de pintarla nosotros mismos». (La Luz Oscura, por Javier Guerrero)

The journal is called Spanish in Context.

Free samples of a few articles are available, but before you’re going to read those for fun, I think I should warn you: its target audience is a highly academic one. The only article I remember thinking of interesting was about the translation of Marx Brothers movies (“Los Hermanos Marx”).

Ñ

Many thanks Matthew for the infos!

An academic audience is me :) Design is a hobby, but I study Spanish literature at uni with personal interest in (socio-)linguistic issues. In the sample issue (3.2 if I remember correctly) I noticed on one article that it started out using curly quotes and finished up with angular quotes. But in terms of spacing, etc., it seemed fine to me. Nice clean presentation of the data in the articles that had them, too.

I hadn’t heard of this particular journal before, the articles are definitely interesting my kind of article, unfortunately my library doesn’t subscribe to it :(

«El futuro es una línea tan fina que apenas nos damos cuenta de pintarla nosotros mismos». (La Luz Oscura, por Javier Guerrero)

The world would sure would look better if more academics had Design as a hobby.

I typeset a lot of doctoral theses (for professional printing, no one-offs), and the closest they usually come to typographics is asking to cram 32 columns of data onto a single page. Oh, and requiring it’s readable as well.