Letters with accents, language by language
Spanish uses only one accent, the acute, and it marks stress or tells two words apart: á é í ó ú as in está, café, así, adiós, tú. Two more marks are part of the alphabet: the tilde on ñ (año, mañana, español) and the diaeresis on ü, which only appears after g to show the u is spoken (pingüino, bilingüe). Capitals keep their accents (Á É Í Ó Ú Ñ), and every question and exclamation opens with ¿ or ¡. Portuguese adds the tilde vowels ã õ (São Paulo, não, informações), the circumflex â ê ô, the grave à and ç (açúcar).
French has the richest set in Western Europe: é (accent aigu: café, été), è à ù (accent grave: très, là, où), â ê î ô û (accent circonflexe: château, fête, île, hôtel, sûr), ë ï ü ÿ (tréma: Noël, naïve, L'Haÿ-les-Roses), ç (cédille: français, garçon) and the ligatures œ (cœur, œuvre) and æ (ex æquo). Capital letters are accented too in careful typography (À É Ç), even though French keyboards make it hard.
German needs ä ö ü (the umlauts) and ß (eszett or scharfes S: Straße, groß). When an umlaut is impossible, Germans write ae, oe, ue, and ß becomes ss; Swiss German never uses ß at all. The capital ẞ exists (STRAẞE) and has been an official spelling since 2017, but SS remains correct in capitals. Swedish uses å ä ö, Danish and Norwegian use æ ø å, Finnish uses ä ö, and Icelandic keeps the old letters ð þ alongside á é í ó ú ý æ ö. Dutch writes ë and ï to split vowels (coëfficiënt, ruïne) and treats ij as one letter, though it is normally typed as i plus j.
Central and Eastern Europe lean on the caron (háček) and the ogonek. Polish: ą ć ę ł ń ó ś ź ż (Łódź, Gdańsk, żółć). Czech: á č ď é ě í ň ó ř š ť ú ů ý ž (Dvořák, Plzeň, Brno needs none); Slovak adds ä ĺ ľ ô ŕ. Croatian, Bosnian, Serbian and Slovene: č ć đ š ž. Hungarian: á é í ó ö ő ú ü ű, the double acute ő ű being its own invention. Romanian: ă â î ș ț, with a comma below, not a cedilla (București). Turkish: ç ğ ı İ ö ş ü, where ı dotless and i dotted are different letters with their own capitals I and İ. Latvian: ā ē ī ū ģ ķ ļ ņ č š ž; Lithuanian: ą ę ė į ų ū č š ž. Maltese: ċ ġ ħ ż; Esperanto: ĉ ĝ ĥ ĵ ŝ ŭ; Welsh: ŵ ŷ and the rarer ẁ ẃ ẅ ỳ; Catalan: à è é í ï ò ó ú ü ç and the l·l written with a middle dot, for which ŀ exists.
Vietnamese is the champion of stacked marks. Its alphabet adds ă â đ ê ô ơ ư to the Latin letters, and then any vowel can carry one of five tone marks: acute á (sắc), grave à (huyền), hook above ả (hỏi), tilde ã (ngã) and dot below ạ (nặng); the sixth tone has no mark. So Việt Nam, phở, Hồ Chí Minh and Nguyễn each need letters from this page. The Vietnamese group above shows the small letters; every one also has a capital (Ấ Ồ Ự …) with a page of its own. Pinyin, the romanisation of Mandarin, marks its four tones with the macron, acute, caron and grave: mā má mǎ mà, and on ü: ǖ ǘ ǚ ǜ (nǚ, lǜ). The macron vowels ā ē ī ō ū also write long vowels in Māori, Hawaiian, Latvian and romanised Japanese (Tōkyō).
What the accent marks mean: acute, grave, circumflex, umlaut, tilde, cedilla and the rest
The acute () slopes up to the right. It marks stress in Spanish, Portuguese, Polish and Hungarian, a closed vowel in French (é), a long vowel in Czech, Slovak and Hungarian, and in Polish it softens consonants (ć ń ś ź). The grave () slopes the other way; French uses it for open è, for à and ù, and Italian for stressed final vowels (città, caffè, perché, più). The circumflex (ˆ) is a small roof: in French it usually remembers a lost s (hôpital from hospital, forêt from forest); in Portuguese and Vietnamese it changes the vowel sound; in Esperanto it makes new consonants ĉ ĝ ĥ ĵ ŝ.
The two dots have two names. An umlaut changes the vowel: German ä ö ü, Swedish ä ö, Hungarian ö ü, Turkish ö ü. A diaeresis (French tréma) keeps two vowels apart or makes a silent one sound: naïve, Noël, Zoë, Spanish pingüino. Unicode does not distinguish them: ä is the same character whichever job it does. The tilde () nasalises Portuguese ã õ and turns Spanish n into ñ; the ring () sits on Scandinavian å and Czech ů; the double acute () lengthens Hungarian ő ű; the dot above () appears in Polish ż, Lithuanian ė, Maltese ċ ġ ż and Turkish İ.
Below the letter: the cedilla (), a little hook on French and Portuguese ç and on Turkish ç ş; the comma below on Romanian ș ț and Latvian ģ ķ ļ ņ; the ogonek (), a hook pointing the other way, on Polish ą ę and Lithuanian ą ę į ų, nasal in Polish and long in Lithuanian. Through the letter: the stroke on Polish ł, Danish ø, Croatian and Vietnamese đ, Maltese ħ and Sami ŧ. And the caron (ˇ), the small v on č š ž ř ě ď ť ň, known as háček in Czech and used from Czech and Slovak through Croatian, Slovene and the Baltic languages to pinyin's third tone ǎ ǐ ǒ ǔ.
Each accent mark also exists on its own as a spacing character ( ˆ ˇ , in the last group) for writing about accents, as this page does. They do not attach to a letter; the attaching kind are the combining marks, which Zalgo & Glitch Text Characters covers.
How to type letters with accents on Windows, Mac, phones and in Word
Windows Alt codes: hold Alt and type the number on the numeric keypad, then release. á 0225, é 0233, í 0237, ó 0243, ú 0250, ñ 0241, ü 0252, ç 0231, ß 0223, à 0224, è 0232, ê 0234, ö 0246, ä 0228, ø 0248, å 0229, æ 0230; capitals Á 0193, É 0201, Í 0205, Ó 0211, Ú 0218, Ñ 0209, Ü 0220, Ç 0199, Ö 0214, Ä 0196. The number is the character's position in Windows-1252, which equals the Unicode code point for these letters, so 0233 is 233 U00E9. The older three-digit codes (Alt130 é, Alt164 ñ, Alt129 ü) come from the 1981 IBM PC character set and still work. Letters outside Western Europe (ł ś č ő ş ą) have no Alt code: use the emoji panel's Symbols tab (Win . then the Ω tab, Windows 11), a language keyboard, or copy from here. The US International layout is the fastest route for frequent typing: ' then e gives é, then a gives à, then o gives ô, " then u gives ü, then n gives ñ.
Mac: hold a letter key and a bar of accented forms pops up (press the number under the one you want); this works in every Mac app since OS X Lion. Or use Option combinations: Option E then a letter for the acute (é á), Option for the grave (è à), Option I for the circumflex (ê ô), Option U for the umlaut (ü ö ä), Option N for the tilde (ñ ã õ), and single keys Option C for ç, Option S for ß, Option A for å, Option O for ø, Option ' for æ, Option Q for œ. Hold Shift as well for capitals.
iPhone and Android: press and hold the base letter; the accented forms appear above the key (e gives è é ê ë ē ė ę, n gives ñ ń, c gives ç ć č, s gives ß ś š). Slide to the one you need. Chromebook has the same long-press on the on-screen keyboard and the US International layout. Microsoft Word adds its own shortcuts: Ctrl ' then e for é, Ctrl then a for à, Ctrl Shift then e for ê, Ctrl Shift : then u for ü, Ctrl Shift then n for ñ, Ctrl , then c for ç, Ctrl & then s for ß, Ctrl / then o for ø. In Word and Outlook you can also type the hex code and press Alt X: 00E9 AltX becomes é, 0142 AltX becomes ł, 1EC7 AltX becomes ệ. Google Docs has Insert Special characters, or simply paste from this page.
The fastest method of all when you need one letter: tap it in the grid above to copy it, then paste. The language strings in the combos below give a whole alphabet's worth of accents in one copy.
Accented letters in names, usernames, search and screen readers
Every character on this page is a real letter in Unicode, encoded since Unicode 1.0 (1991) for the Western European and Central European sets (the Latin-1 Supplement and Latin Extended-A blocks, the first of which is the old ISO 8859-1 character set) and since 1.1 (1993) for the Vietnamese letters; the Romanian ș ț followed in 3.0 (1999) and the capital ẞ in 5.1 (2008). They display on every device, in every font, and sort and search as letters: Google treats café and cafe, München and Munchen as the same query in most languages, so an accented word in a bio or a post is still found by people who type it without the accent.
Names are where accents matter most. José, Zoë, Łukasz, Nguyễn, Müller and Søren are spelled wrongly without them, and many forms, airline bookings and government systems still strip or reject them; when a form refuses é, use the plain letter there and the correct spelling everywhere else. Accented letters are also a quiet way to style a display name (Jéssica, Sofía, Chloé, Émile) without the broken look of fancy fonts. Display names on Instagram, TikTok, X and Discord accept them; usernames and handles, the part after @, usually allow only plain letters, digits, dots and underscores, so keep accents for the display name and bio.
Screen readers handle these letters well, because they are letters. In a French or Spanish text the voice simply says the word; in an English text a reader may say the letter name ("e acute") when spelling, but reads café as a word. That is the opposite of the maths-alphabet fonts used for bold or cursive text, which are read character by character. One technical point: an accented letter can be stored as one code (é, U00E9) or as e followed by a combining mark (e U0301), which looks identical; the letters here are the single-code forms, which is what keyboards produce and what every search box and form expects.
For the other letter styles and scripts on this site see Letter Emoji & Alphabet Symbols, the Greek Letters with their tonos accents, IPA Phonetic Symbols for ə ʃ ŋ and the other sound letters, Punctuation Symbols and Quotation Mark Symbols for ¿ ¡ « » and the French guillemets, and Fullwidth Text (Vaporwave Letters) or Cursive Letters (Script Text) when the goal is a look rather than a language.
Symbols
277Click a symbol to copy it and open its page.
Vowels with every accent
one accent per column, capital above small; a gap means that letter has no precomposed character with that accent
Consonants with accents
ñ, ç, š, ł and their relatives; the dot column holds ŀ, the Catalan l with a middle dot
Ligatures and special letters
letters of their own rather than accented ones, but every keyboard search for accents ends up needing them
Vietnamese tone letters
small letters only; the a, e, i, o, u, y forms with an acute or grave are in the vowel grid above, and every form here also has a capital
Pinyin ü with tone marks
for nǚ, lǜ and friends; ā á ǎ à, ē é ě è and the other tone vowels are in the vowel grid
How to use them
6 situationsClick to copyLetters with Accents combos
15Worth knowing
- The Spanish ñ began as a scribe's shortcut: medieval copyists wrote a double n as one n with a small line above it, so Latin annus became año. The tilde is literally the second n.
- The two dots of the German umlaut descend from a tiny letter e written above the vowel in handwriting; that is why ae, oe and ue are the accepted substitutes when ä ö ü cannot be typed.
- The capital ẞ was added to Unicode in 2008 and became part of official German spelling only in 2017; before that, STRASSE was the only way to write Straße in capitals.
- Romanian spent years with the wrong letters: fonts and keyboards offered only Turkish-style ş ţ with a cedilla, and the correct ș ț with a comma below did not enter Unicode until 1999.
- The cedilla takes its name from Spanish, cedilla meaning little z, because it started as a small z written under a c, yet Spanish gave up ç in the 1700s and French, Portuguese and Turkish kept it.
- Vietnamese owes its accented alphabet to 17th-century Portuguese and French Jesuit missionaries; the dictionary that fixed the system was printed in Rome in 1651, and it replaced Chinese-based characters as the national script in the early 20th century.
Questions people ask
8How do I copy and paste letters with accents?
Tap or click any letter in the grid above and it is copied; then paste it with Ctrl V, Cmd V or long-press and Paste. The grid is arranged by letter and accent, so é is in the e row under the acute column. For a whole language at once, copy one of the combo strings, such as á é í ó ú ñ ü for Spanish.
How do I type letters with accents on a Windows keyboard?
Hold Alt and type the code on the numeric keypad: Alt 0233 gives é, 0225 á, 0241 ñ, 0252 ü, 0231 ç, 0223 ß, 0201 É. Without a keypad, open the emoji panel with Win . and choose the Symbols tab, or switch to the US International keyboard, where ' then e types é and then n types ñ.
How do I type accents on a Mac?
Hold the letter key and pick the accented form from the pop-up bar, or use Option: Option E then a vowel for the acute (é), Option for the grave (à), Option I for the circumflex (ê), Option U for the umlaut (ü), Option N for the tilde (ñ); Option C gives ç and Option S gives ß.
What are the letters with accents in Spanish?
Spanish has five acute-accented vowels, á é í ó ú, the ñ with a tilde and the ü with a diaeresis (only in güe and güi, as in pingüino). Their capitals Á É Í Ó Ú Ñ Ü keep the marks, and the inverted ¿ and ¡ open questions and exclamations. All of them are in the grid and in the Spanish combo.
What are the letters with accents in French?
French uses é (aigu), è à ù (grave), â ê î ô û (circonflexe), ë ï ü ÿ (tréma) and ç (cédille), plus the ligatures œ and æ. Capitals are accented too: É À Ç. The French combo string has all of them in one copy.
What are the Alt codes for accented letters?
The common ones: á 0225, é 0233, í 0237, ó 0243, ú 0250, ñ 0241, ü 0252, ö 0246, ä 0228, ç 0231, ß 0223, à 0224, è 0232, ê 0234, ø 0248, å 0229, æ 0230; capitals Á 0193, É 0201, Ñ 0209, Ü 0220, Ç 0199. Hold Alt, type the four digits on the numeric keypad, release. Letters such as ł č ő ş have no Alt code, so copy them from here or use Word's Alt X with the Unicode hex (0142 for ł).
How do I type accented letters in Word?
Use Word's shortcuts: Ctrl ' then e for é, Ctrl then a for à, Ctrl Shift then e for ê, Ctrl Shift : then u for ü, Ctrl Shift then n for ñ, Ctrl , then c for ç. For any letter, type its Unicode hex code and press Alt X (00E9 for é, 0144 for ń). Insert Symbol lists them all, and pasting from this page works in Word, Outlook and Google Docs alike.
How do I type accents on an iPhone or Android phone?
Press and hold the plain letter on the keyboard: holding e shows è é ê ë ē ė ę, holding n shows ñ ń, holding c shows ç ć č, holding s shows ß ś š. Slide your finger to the one you want and let go. This works in every app, and the letters are the same characters as on this page.
