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German alphabet and characters

The German 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:

German characters (lower case)

Upper-case characters

German grammar rules

Nouns

German nouns have three genders: masculine, feminine and the neuter. Nouns decline for case and number. All nouns are capitalised, except for proper nouns.

Verbs

The verbs are conjugated in person, number and mood (indicative, conditional, imperative and subjunctive). There are six tenses in German. The present and past tenses are conjugated, and there are four compound tenses.

Separable prefixes
Many verbs have a separable prefix that changes the meaning of the root verb. It does not always remain attached to the root verb. The verb normally takes the second or the final position in a sentence. For separable prefix verbs, the prefix always appears in final position. If a particular sentence’s structure places the entire verb in final position then the prefix and root verb appear together. If a sentence places the verb in second position then only the root verb will appear in second position and the separated prefix is moved to the end of the sentence.

German formatting rules

Date formats

First day of the week	Monday
Working days	Monday to Friday
Short date format	d.MM.yyyy, as well as dd.MM.yy
	e.g. 24.03.2016 or 24.03.16
Long date format	d. MMMM yyyy or full day name, dd. MMMM yyyy
	e.g. 24. März 2016 or Mittwoch, 24. März 2016

Numbers and measurements

Decimal separator		, (comma)
		e.g. 11,50
Thousand separator		. (period)
		e.g. 2.000, not 2000
Five and more digit numbers format		split into groups of three from the right using period
		e.g. 20.000.000,50, not 20 000 000.50
NB: For Switzerland and Liechtenstein use a period (.) as decimal separator and an apostrophe (‘) for thousands. e.g. 10.50 cm / 2’000.50 / 120’000 kg
Measurement units		non-breaking space
		e.g. 1 cm, not 1cm 10 %, not 10%
		39 ˚C (for technical use) or 39° C (for general use), and never 39˚C
Percentage		% symbol is preceded by a space unless it is being used in an adjectival position. e.g. a 10% increase = eine 10%ige Erhöhung
German currency name		euro
Currency symbol		€
Currency symbol position		located after the number, preceded by a space
		e.g. 100,50 € / 100.500,00 €

German capitalisation usage

Should be capitalised

All nouns.
People’s names.
Geographical names (of countries, counties/states, cities etc.), language names.
Nominalized cardinal and ordinal numbers.
Only the German personal pronoun “Sie” must be capitalized, other pronouns (du, dich, ihr, euch, ) should be in lower case letters.

Should NOT be capitalised