Letters With an Acute Accent: Copy, Type and Use Them

The acute accent ( ´ ) is a short line slanting up to the right above a letter, as in á, é, í, ó, ú. Click any letter above to copy it, or type it with Alt 0233 for é on Windows and Option + E, then the vowel on a Mac.

It is the most widely used accent in European languages. This page covers how to type every acute letter, what the mark does in each language, and its Unicode codes.

How to type acute accent letters

Vowels with an acute accent

Alt codes need the number pad with Num Lock on.

Consonants with an acute accent

These have no Windows Alt code and no Mac Option shortcut. In Word, type the hex code and press Alt + X. On Windows, you can also use Win + . (period) and the Symbols tab, or copy them from the grid above.

On a Mac, press and hold c, n, s or z to find ć, ń, ś and ź in the pop-up menu. For ĺ, ŕ and ý, open the Character Viewer with Control + Command + Space and search "acute".

For a full method-by-method walkthrough, start with how to get an accent over a letter. For é in particular, see how to type e with an accent.

What the acute accent does in each language

The same mark does very different jobs depending on the language.

Spanish

The acute is the only accent Spanish uses on vowels. It marks the stressed syllable when the normal stress rules do not predict it, and it separates pairs like sí (yes) and si (if). Our Spanish accent rules explain exactly when to write it.

French

French puts the acute only on e. The accent aigu turns it into a closed "ay" sound, as in café and été. All other French vowels with accents use the grave or circumflex.

Portuguese and Italian

In Portuguese, the acute marks an open stressed vowel, while the circumflex marks a closed one. Avó (grandmother) and avô (grandfather) differ only by this mark.

Italian mostly uses the grave, but writes é for a closed e at the end of words like perché and poiché.

Irish

In Irish the mark is called the síneadh fada, or just fada ("long"). It marks a long vowel and changes meaning: Seán is a name, while sean means "old". See Irish fada letters.

Polish

Polish uses the acute, called kreska, on ć, ń, ś and ź to mark soft consonants, and on ó, which is said like u. Our Polish accent letters page lists all nine extra Polish letters.

Czech, Slovak and Hungarian

In Czech and Slovak the acute (čárka) makes a vowel long. Slovak also uses it on ĺ and ŕ, where l and r act as long syllable cores. Hungarian marks long vowels with an acute too, and uses the double acute (ő, ű) for long ö and ü.

Icelandic

In Icelandic, á, é, í, ó, ú and ý are separate letters of the alphabet with their own sounds, not stressed versions of the plain vowels.

A short history

The acute accent comes from Ancient Greek, where the oxia ("sharp") marked a syllable said with a rising, high pitch. Latin grammarians translated the name as accentus acutus, which gives the English word "acute".

Later European spelling systems borrowed the mark and gave it new jobs, from stress in Spanish to vowel length in Czech and Irish.

Unicode and the combining acute

Every letter in the grid above is a single precomposed character, such as U+00E9 for é. That is the form you want for normal text, search and sorting.

Unicode also has a combining acute accent, U+0301, which attaches to the letter before it. Typing e followed by U+0301 displays as é but is stored as two characters. Use it only when no precomposed letter exists, for example to mark stress in a dictionary.

The standalone spacing acute ( ´ ) is U+00B4, typed with Alt 0180 on Windows.

The acute has a mirror image: the grave accent, which slants the other way. For the names of every other mark, see accent mark names.