What ´ means
It can change how a letter is read.
Depending on the writing system, an acute accent can mark pronunciation, stress, tone, or a different letter value.
The language determines which reading applies.
Technical and typographic; not ordinary English punctuation.
In polished English, use an apostrophe for contractions and possession.
Part of the collection
Don't confuse it with
6
Apostrophe
Acute accent vs apostrophe: ' is punctuation; ´ is an accent mark.
Grave Accent
Grave accent slants the other way, down to the right; in code it is the backtick.
Modifier Letter Acute Accent
Near-identical, but a letter-like mark used for the second tone in Bopomofo.
Prime
Marks feet, minutes or derivatives, not an accent.
Greek Tonos
The modern Greek stress mark; same shape, separate Greek character.
The combining form attaches to the preceding letter; ´ has its own spacing.
Related characters
2
Combination ideas
5Shobon: a dejected, mildly sad little face.
Teary face: crying or deeply moved.
Cheerful wave hello or goodbye.
Tired sigh or quiet resignation.
Dead-key typing: acute then e gives é.
Questions people ask
1Why does ´ show as a box on some devices?
Because that device's fonts have no glyph for it. The character is still correct and still copies correctly — the box is a missing glyph, not a broken character.
More like this
19
🇫🇷Flag: France
🇪🇸Flag: Spain
🇵🇱Flag: Poland
🇵🇹Flag: Portugal
ˊModifier Letter Acute Accent
ᐟCanadian Syllabics Final Acute᫋Combining Triple Acute AccentꙿCyrillic Payerok𖫰Bassa Vah Combining High Tone𛲀Duployan Affix High Acute𛲐Duployan Affix Low Acute
²Superscript Two
³Superscript Three
µMicro Sign
`Grave Accent
∠Angle
^Circumflex AccentʰModifier Letter Small HʱModifier Letter Small H With HookCollections with ´
4
How to type or find ´
- Search it as
- accent aigu · spacing acute · combining acute accent · apostrophe lookalike · type acute accent
- Shows up in
- Anything that takes text · its shape is whatever your font draws
Windows (Word)
Windows
HTML
´CSS
\00B4how to type ´
In GNOME on Linux, press CtrlShiftU, type 00B4, then Enter. Some keyboard layouts make the acute and apostrophe keys easy to confuse.
Codes and encoding1 code points
HTML decimal
´
HTML hex
´
CSS content
content: "\00B4";
Each escape is closed by the next backslash; a trailing space is needed before a literal hex digit.
URL encoded
%C2%B4
1
On screen
1
Code points
1
JS .length
2
UTF-8 bytes
A visible symbol can contain several code points. JS .length counts UTF-16 units; UTF-8 counts bytes.