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My explanation of the stress rule

A stress in a word simply means a lengthened syllable.
Every word in Spanish has one stress. If you put more than one in then it sounds like there are two words. It is important to get it in the correct place because if you do not, you may not be understood or even misunderstood.

If the word has an accented letter á é í ó ú then the stress is on that syllable. Easy.
intervención, hablé, cámara, sandía, azúcar etc.
But what if it does not have an accent?

The 'nose' rule (for words without an accent)

I learned this rule from a Michel Thomas CD course. I did not invent this rule.
It is a way to remember and decide which words have the penultimate (second to last) syllable stressed and which has the last syllable stressed.
NOSE has vowels, n and s. If a word is a nose word then it ends in a vowel, n or s. You stress the penultimate syllable.
If the word is not a nose word then you stress the last syllable. In these examples, I have underlined where the stress is to make things easier:

"Nose" words - the penultimate (second to last) syllable is stressed
lista
normalmente
casi
vuelto
tribu
llaman
quinientos

Not a "nose" word - the last syllable is stressed
animal
navigar
soledad
There aren't many words in Spanish that end in other consonants except for foreign words such as 'internet'.

If a word has only one syllable then you can say it without thinking about it because there is only one syllable to stress - lo, el, la, tú, de etc.
You will soon get used to deciding where the stress is. You will even be able to hear where it is because if you hear a new word that contravenes the nose rule then you think "oh, there must be an accent in it" e.g. champú, habitación and díficil.
Be careful! - I have noticed that Spanish people on the internet sometimes miss the accent out because they can understand what they mean. This can confuse foreigners for example, one of my friends sent me this message:
¿Es para que nos de tiempo de pensar el regalo?
Which took me a long time to work out because they missed the accent on the word 'dé'. The correct sentence is:
¿Es para que nos dé tiempo de pensar el regalo? = It is to give us time to think about the gift?

Also I have noticed that they sometimes miss the initial upside-down question and exclamation mark -¡¿ in their sentences.
I can recommend reading comics or magazines that interest you as they do not (or should not) have mistakes in them. They are more interesting to read and you read dialogue which is important to learn as you can pick up common everyday words.

Adding and removing the stress mark (which is called an 'acute accent')

There are times when you remove the acute accent. The simple rule is that if it makes no difference to the sound, remove it. I generally see it when making a word feminine or plural when a word has a stress mark at the end:
inglés→ingleses
inglés→inglesa
objeción→objeciones
notice that if you put the accent back in and SAY it, then it makes no difference to the sound so that is why it is left out in these cases. See below under 'other uses of the accent'.

BUT!
You put an accent in some words for a different reason. The accent is used to force the stress to be on the syllable that you expect it to be. I see this often when putting pronouns (such as lo, la and te) on the end of verbs:
¡Diga! = tell! (the stress is on diga)
¡Dígame! = tell me! (the accent forces the stress back on to dígame)
If you are still unsure, try taking out the accent and say the word. You will see that without the accent, the stress would be on the penultimate (second to last) syllable.
It is important when learning to SAY words as well as reading them to engage more of the brain in to the learning process.

Other uses of the accent

You may see it used when it makes no difference to the sound. This happens when you want to distinguish it from another word that is spelt the same. You should have seen these for example:

el = the	él = he
tu = your (familiar form)	tú = you (familiar form)
si = if	sí = yes

It is also used on certain question words or where a question is implied:
¿cuándo llegan? = When do they arrive?
No sé qué hacer = I don't know what to do (implying 'what do I do?')

I wish to reiterate that on the internet and texts, the Spanish sometimes miss accents out which is not a problem for them as they know what they mean.

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You can contact me at the bottom of the home page.

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