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Dutch alphabet and characters

The Dutch alphabet should display only the following characters. If your document is not showing correctly, then first check that the encoding for that program and font supports Germanic languages.

Lower-case characters:

Dutch_lower

Upper-case characters

Dutch grammar rules

Nouns

Dutch nouns have two numbers – singular and plural. There are three genders – masculine, feminine and neuter. However, in a modern use, there is no distinction between masculine and feminine genders, and there is only a distinction between common and neuter.

Dutch has both a definite and indefinite articles.

Verbs

Dutch formatting rules

Date formats

First day of the week	Monday
Working days	Monday to Friday
Short date format	d-m-yy or dd-mm-yy
	e.g. 24-3-16 or 24-mtr-16
Long date format	dddd d mmmm yyyy or d mmmm yyyy for correspondence
	e.g. donderdag 24 maart 2016 / 24 maart 2016

Numbers and measurements

Decimal separator	, (comma)
	e.g. 11,50
Thousand separator	. (period)
	e.g. 2.000, not 2 000
Five and more digit numbers format	split into groups of three from the right using period as a thousand separator
	e.g. 20.000, not 20 000
Measurement units	non-breaking space
	e.g. 1 cm, not 1cm 39 ˚C, not 39˚C Exception: 10%, not 10 %
Dutch currency name	euro
Currency symbol	€
Currency symbol position	can be written in three ways
	e.g. € 100,50 / 100,50 € / EUR 100,50

Dutch capitalisation usage

Should be capitalised

People’s names.
Geographical names (of countries, counties/states, cities etc.).
Headings/titles and column/row headings should start with a capital letter unless a proper noun is featured.
Product names follow the source capitalisation.
Always use uppercase at the beginning of each module descriptor title: “Start | Geavanceerd zoeken | Mijn voorkeuren | Site aanmelden | Help”.
Always use uppercase for each descriptor of a graphic for functional element (“Klik op de knop Zoeken”, “Klik op het tabblad Opties”).
Always use uppercase when referring to UI elements: “Kies een provincie uit de lijst en klik op Zoeken.” and to keys (T, Shift, Alt), key combinations should be rewritten using the plus sign (+): “Ctrl+C”.
The first word following a colon should not be written with a capital, unless there is more than one sentence after the colon. In that case, the first word should be written with a capital.

Should NOT be capitalised

Solutions for Dutch

Stepping Stone provides translation and localisation services for Dutch