The RAE has resolved one of the great grammatical disputes of recent years: returns the tilde in the adverb “only” -when he behaves like “only”-. The same goes for demonstrative pronouns. “this, that and that”which are branded when in the writer’s opinion they may be ambiguous.
Sources from the plenary session of the Academy of Language have explained to EFE that this novelty was claimed by the academic writers themselves for years, considering that it was necessary “decriminalize” the use of the tilde since, in some cases, the word gave rise to cases of ambiguity.
“Alone”, with accent before the ambiguity
Until now, the RAE determined that the word “only”, both when it is an adverb and is equivalent to only and when it is an adjective, as well as the demonstratives “this, that and that”, with their feminine and plural forms, whether they functioned as pronouns or as determiners, they should not have an accentaccording to the general rules of accentuation.
Previous orthographic rules did prescribe the use of the tilde in the adverb alone and the aforementioned demonstrative pronouns, as long as in a statement they could be interpreted ambiguously. For example: “He works only on Sundays”, which opens up two possibilities, working without company or working only on that day of the week. The current standard stated that these “ambiguities” could be resolved by the context of the sentence itself.
The general recommendation was not to mark these wordsalthough it was optional when its use entailed a risk of ambiguity, but it was not defined in whose opinion, the sources have explained, who have highlighted that there were cases of examinations and oppositions in which its use subtracted note because it used to depend on the criteria of the teacher or examiner.
The novelty that will be introduced now is that it becomes the criteria of the person who writes the text to mark these words or not.
The academic and writer Arturo Pérez-Reverte has highlighted to EFE his satisfaction with this novelty and has indicated that all scholars have agreed to introduce this formulation, since it does not destroy the initial formulation but allows a more reasonable use of the tilde in these cases, since it is the author of the text who decides whether or not to use it.
