10 Essential German Spelling Rules ss — ß: After a short vo | Learn German with Leo🦁

10 Essential German Spelling Rules

ss — ß: After a short vowel, ss follows: Kuss, Fluss, dass. After a long vowel or diphthong, ß follows if there is no consonant in the word stem: Fuß, genießen, außer, groß.

After a short stressed vowel, the consonant is doubled: betteln, Himmel, nennen.

Separate words are formed with sein: krank sein, combinations of "verb" + "participle": gefallen haben, entspannt arbeiten, "verb" + "noun": Auto fahren, Pause machen, Kaffee trinken (but: kennenlernen, übernachten, mitmachen), "verb" + "adjective": schnell laufen.

Nouns and all nominalized parts of speech start with a capital letter: Freiheit, Ratschlag, das Lesen, im Englischen, Italienische Pasta ...

Dates are written:

After vorgestern, gestern, heute, morgen, übermorgen, the time of day is capitalized (heute Morgen, morgen Nachmittag)Days of the week and times of day are written as one word (Donnerstagmorgen, Freitagnacht)Times of day ending in -s are lowercase (abends, montags, sonntagabends)

When combining words, all letters are written without abbreviation: Stoffwechsel, Flussbett.

In letters, du, dir, dein, eure are written in lowercase.

All foreign words with fon/fot/graf are written with f, not ph: Telefon, Fotografie.

A comma is not used before "und" and "oder". A comma is used before an infinitive group or clause only in rare cases when it affects the meaning of the sentence: Er hat genug Geld(,) um in Urlaub zu fahren.

Words are divided by syllables: Schmet-ter-ling, Mu-sik-er, Ent-schei-dung. Ck and ch are not separated when dividing.