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Writing Content in Spanish

How to do quotes in Spanish academic texts

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Spanish freelance proofreader
creative commons licensed ( BY ) flickr photo shared by Freddy The Boy

One of the most demanded proofreading things is check the references in the text.

In Spanish as in English you need to reference every author from who you take ideas or statements. Most journals have their own rules for referencing, but they are very similar too.

You will likely need to reference the author surname plus the publication data of the work in the text, and then in a final section of the paper you will have to add a reference list in alphabetical order.

In short quoting in Spanish is quite similar to quoting in English, and here the issues usually come because the author don’t know how to quote properly in English either.

Here you can see an example of quoting rules followed by many Spanish journals.

And now, take a look to some

Tips to make quoting easier

  1. Every time you read a book or academic journal that you feel you can use in the future, add it to your reference data base. There are some software to help you with this, but if you don’t want to spend money, just use an Excell.
  2. Every time you quote someone in your text, add the full quotation. Sometimes people just write a little reference, like the surname or the title of the work, and then when the full paper is finished complete all the references. This is, in my opinion, a mistake. It is much better if you create your references in the time you are quoting it, when all the details are still fresh.
  3. Always do the quotation in the same way. This is a need of the academic rules so you must do it anyway, but it also helps you to don’t miss any important section of the quotation. If the editor is before the place of publication in one quotation, all the rest should be in the same order.

I am used to doing academic texts for myself so I can check your reference list or do many other proofreader tasks.

Don’t hesitate to contact me.

Writing Content in Spanish

How to write an academic work in Spanish (II)

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Today’s post comes from this post about the structure of an academic text in Spanish.

This time I will focus in the person in which the text should be written. Should I have to write in first person? Or impersonal? Or what is the same when writing my academic report I need to use YO such as he efectuado or a passive voice like se ha efectuado.

In Spanish academic texts you can use both first person or impersonal. But once you opt for one way you need to keep it all along the text. So you can’t start talking in first person and finish talking impersonal. That is one good reason to hire someone to proofread you Spanish academic text.

It is common to use the plural of the first person, like hemos realizado even when the author of the paper is a single one.

If you want to publish the paper in an academic journal you need to read their requirements. Sometimes they specify if you have to use impersonal or first person. If there is not information about the subject I would suggest to user impersonal way and passive voice because some people would find first person too informal for an academic writing.

However, it depends more on the reader that in a real well-known rule.

Writing Content in Spanish

How to write an academic work in Spanish (I)

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Many foreign students of Spanish need to do university research works for their Spanish class, and it is always hard to find a guide about how to do this kind of academic texts. I will share some tips to those who sometimes need to write an academic text in Spanish.

I don’t want to do a very large article so I will divide the full content into various posts.

Today I will focus in

The structure of an academic text in Spanish

First of all you need an introduction (in Spanish introducción) in which you have to talk about three main things.

The topic of the text or what the text is about.The goal of the text or what is the value added to the reader. The methodology used or how you achieved that value. Also, you can talk about the most important conclusion, though this is not mandatory and maybe you want to keep something to the rest of the text.

After the introducción, you could start with some theory written by experts about your research topic. Don’t forget to add all the references in the text body and in the end of the article. How to quote in Spanish is a long topic, and maybe I will write a post about it in the future.

The theory part cold be called marco teórico, but it is very common that people use more suggestive titles that give an idea about what the text is about.

Once you have shown that you know the previous theory related with your research topic, you have to explain how you developed your research and the results that it gave.

Then you have to write the conclusions, in which you should summarize the new things that your research have add to the world.

Lastly, you need your reference list in alphabetic order. Some authors put the references in the footer if each page, but this is old fashioned and now we are trending to the final list in a full body page.

If you don’t feel comfortable with your text, you always can hire a proofreader.