The Royal Spanish Academy (RAE) has decided this Thursday a new wording that will be published in the Pan-Hispanic Dictionary of Doubts (DPD) on the use of the word “only”, as it has advanced ABC. When it is used as an adverb (which is equivalent to only), the Academy will add a caveat in which it will allow it to carry an accent if there is a risk of ambiguity. The rule will also apply to the demonstrative pronouns “this, that and that”, with their feminine and plural, always exclusively in cases of possible confusion if the writer perceives it that way.
In the first place, the RAE clarifies that it is “obligatory not to put the tilde if there is no ambiguity” and that it is “optional” to put it in contexts where the person who writes perceives risks of ambiguity. The rule on these words changed 12 years ago, when the academy introduced the general recommendation not to check these words. According to the version in force up to now, the word solo it “could be checked when it functioned as an adverb and if there is a risk of ambiguity, but it is recommended not to check it even in those cases and resolve the ambiguity in another way”. The novelty that will be introduced now is that in cases where there is a risk of confusion, using the tilde or not becomes the discretion of the person who writes the text.
This novelty, as sources from the plenary session of the Academy of Language have explained to EFE, had been claimed for years by academic writers who considered that the use of the tilde in these words should be “decriminalized”, since there were cases of ambiguity.
The 2010 decision generated controversy and numerous writers claimed the use of the tilde for these words. Authors such as Mario Vargas Llosa, Javier Marías or Pere Gimferrer continued to accentuate the adverb and it was criticized that the measure generated confusion. The Academy has been divided on the tilde in solo and the demonstrative pronouns, as the director of the RAE, Santiago Muñoz Machado, recognized in an interview in July 2020.
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