Spanish Letters With Accent Marks (Copy and Paste)

The Spanish letters with accent marks are á, é, í, ó, ú, ü and ñ. Their capitals are Á, É, Í, Ó, Ú, Ü and Ñ, and Spanish adds two inverted punctuation marks, ¿ and ¡. Click any letter above to copy it, or use the codes in the table below to type it.

That is the complete set. Spanish has no other accented letters, so if you have these fourteen letters and two marks, you can write any Spanish word.

All Spanish accented letters at a glance

Alt codes need the numeric keypad with Num Lock on. Hold Alt, type the four digits, then let go of Alt. The number keys along the top of the keyboard do not work for this.

Spanish accent letters in uppercase

Capitals use different codes from the lowercase letters. On a Mac, keep the same Option key and press Shift with the letter, not with Option.

Do not drop the accent on capitals. The Real Academia Española (RAE) treats an accent on a capital as part of the spelling: Álvaro, Óscar, ÉXITO. More examples are in our guide to capital letters with accent marks.

What the Spanish names mean

In Spanish, the written accent mark is called a tilde. So á is read "a con tilde", and a word that carries one is "una palabra con tilde". The word acento usually means the spoken stress, which every word has whether or not it is written.

This trips up English speakers, because in English "tilde" means only the wavy line on ñ. Spanish speakers often call that wavy line "la tilde de la eñe" or, more formally, the virgulilla.

The two dots on ü are the diéresis, sometimes called crema. Ñ is not a letter with an accent at all. It is the eñe, the 15th letter of the 27-letter Spanish alphabet, and it sorts after n in dictionaries. For more on ñ, see how to type ñ. For the names of every mark across languages, see accent mark names.

When Spanish uses these letters

Spanish puts the acute accent on a vowel in two situations. The first is to show which syllable is stressed when the word breaks the normal stress pattern, as in canción, árbol and música. The second is to tell apart words that are spelled the same, such as tú (you) and tu (your), or sí (yes) and si (if). Question words also take it: qué, cómo, dónde.

The diéresis appears only on u, and only in the groups güe and güi, where it tells you to pronounce the u: pingüino, vergüenza, lingüística. The inverted marks ¿ and ¡ open every question and exclamation. The full set of stress rules, diacritical pairs and the 2010 RAE changes are in Spanish accent rules.

How to type Spanish accent letters

The fastest method depends on your device:

• Windows: Alt codes from the tables above, or switch to the US International keyboard and type ' then e for é.
• Mac: Option + E, then the vowel. Option + N, then n gives ñ. You can also press and hold a vowel to pick from a menu.
• Microsoft Word: Ctrl + ', then the vowel. Ctrl + Shift + ~, then n gives ñ.
• iPhone and Android: press and hold the letter, then slide to the accented version.

Each method, including the Spanish keyboard layout and older three-digit Alt codes, is set out step by step in how to type Spanish accents.

HTML codes for Spanish letters

If you write web pages, use the named entity or the numeric reference so the letter displays correctly in any encoding.

Writing in French as well? The French letters with accent marks page has the same layout for French.