French Letters With Accent Marks (Copy and Paste)

The French letters with accent marks are é, à, è, ù, â, ê, î, ô, û, ë, ï, ü, ÿ and ç. French also uses two joined letters, æ and œ. The capitals are É, À, È, Ù, Â, Ê, Î, Ô, Û, Ë, Ï, Ü, Ÿ, Ç, Æ and Œ. Click any letter above to copy it.

That is the full set. French has no tilde, no ñ and no acute accent on any vowel other than e.

All French accented letters at a glance

Alt codes need the numeric keypad with Num Lock on. Hold Alt, type the digits on the keypad, then release Alt.

Some letters are rare. The ù appears in only one common word, où. The ÿ appears only in a few place names and surnames, and æ only in a handful of Latin borrowings. The rest you will meet on almost every page of French text.

French capital letters with accents

On a Mac, keep the Option key the same and press Shift with the letter: Option + E, then Shift + E gives É. For Ç, Æ and Œ, add Shift to the Option shortcut: Option + Shift + C gives Ç.

The Académie française is clear that capitals keep their accents: ÉCOLE, État, À bientôt, Ça va. Missing accents on capitals can change the meaning, so write them. Our guide to capital letters with accent marks has more on typing them.

The five French accent marks in brief

French uses five marks, each with its own name. The accent aigu (é) sits only on e and gives the closed "ay" sound. The accent grave (à, è, ù) opens the sound of e in words like mère, and on a and u it separates words that would otherwise look the same: a (has) and à (to), ou (or) and où (where).

The accent circonflexe (â ê î ô û) often marks an s that dropped out of the word centuries ago: forêt and forest, hôpital and hospital. The tréma (ë ï ü ÿ) tells you to pronounce a vowel separately from the one before it, as in Noël and maïs. The cédille (ç) softens c to an s sound before a, o and u, as in ça and garçon. The full rules, including the 1990 spelling reform, are in French accent marks explained.

Œ and æ are letters, not accents

The joined letters œ and æ are ligatures. Standard French spelling requires œ in common words: cœur (heart), sœur (sister), œuf (egg), œil (eye), œuvre (work). Writing "coeur" is a keyboard workaround, not the correct spelling.

Not every o followed by e is a ligature. Words where the two vowels are pronounced separately, such as coexister and moelle, use plain oe. The æ is far rarer and appears mainly in Latin-derived terms such as cæcum and nævus.

How to type French accent letters

• Windows: use the Alt codes in the tables above, or switch to a French or US International keyboard.
• Mac: Option + E for é, Option + ` for grave, Option + I for circumflex, Option + U for tréma, Option + C for ç.
• Microsoft Word: Ctrl + ', then e for é. Ctrl + , (comma), then c for ç.
• Phones: press and hold the letter and slide to the accent you need.

AZERTY and Canadian layouts, Word shortcuts and more are covered step by step in how to type French accents. For every accented form of e across languages, see the e with accent page.

Writing in Spanish too? The Spanish letters with accent marks page uses the same layout.