Letter Accent Symbols — How to Type Accented Characters (é, ñ, ü, ø)

Nothing makes you feel more uncultured than needing to type "café" and ending up writing "cafe" because you can't figure out the accent mark. Or spelling someone's name wrong because you can't type ñ. These characters matter — they change pronunciation, meaning, and show basic respect for other languages.

Here's every accented letter you might need, organized by type, plus how to actually type them on your devices.

Acute Accent (´) — é, á, í, ó, ú

The acute accent is the little mark that goes up and to the right. It's used in French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, and many other languages. In Spanish, it marks stress. In French, it changes the sound of the vowel.

The most commonly needed ones are é (like in résumé, café, fiancée) and á/ó for Spanish words. If you only remember how to type one accent, make it the acute.

Grave Accent (`) — è, à, ì, ò, ù

The opposite of acute — this one goes down and to the left. Used in French (très, après), Italian (perché, città), and Vietnamese.

English speakers encounter this mainly in French loanwords. "À la carte" technically needs that accent, though most restaurants skip it and nobody judges them for it.

Circumflex (ˆ) — ê, â, î, ô, û

The little hat symbol. Common in French (hôtel, rôle, crêpe), Portuguese, and Romanian. In French, it often marks where an 's' used to be in older versions of the word — hôtel used to be hostel, forêt used to be forest. Kind of interesting once you notice the pattern.

Umlaut / Diaeresis (¨) — ä, ö, ü, ë, ï

Two dots over a letter. In German (München, über), this changes the vowel sound completely. In French and Dutch, it's called a diaeresis and means "pronounce this vowel separately" — like in naïve (na-EEV, not NAVE).

Fun fact: the band Mötley Crüe used umlauts purely for the aesthetic. The dots don't mean anything in English — they just look metal. This started a whole trend of decorative umlauts in band names.

Tilde (~) — ñ, ã, õ

The wavy line. Most people know it from Spanish (España, piñata, jalapeño). In Portuguese, it appears over a and o (São Paulo, coração). It indicates a nasal sound.

The ñ is so important in Spanish that Spain considers it a separate letter of the alphabet, not just an n with decoration. When websites or systems strip it out, it can change the meaning of words entirely.

Cedilla (¸) — ç

That little hook under the letter c. Makes it sound like an 's' instead of a hard 'k'. Used in French (français, garçon), Portuguese (açúcar), and Turkish (çay).

Nordic and Special Characters

Scandinavian languages have letters that don't exist in English at all:

The ß (Eszett or sharp S) is uniquely German. It used to appear only in lowercase, but they officially introduced a capital version (ẞ) in 2017. Germans take their letters seriously.

How to Type Accented Characters

On Windows

Hold the Alt key and type the code on your number pad:

• Alt + 0233 = é
• Alt + 0241 = ñ
• Alt + 0252 = ü
• Alt + 0231 = ç

Or use the international keyboard layout, where you type the accent first (apostrophe for acute, backtick for grave) then the letter. Takes some getting used to but it's fast once you learn it.

On Mac

Hold the letter key down and a popup appears with accent options. Press the number to select. So hold 'e' and press 2 for é. This works in most apps.

Alternatively, use keyboard shortcuts: Option+e then e gives you é. Option+n then n gives you ñ. Option+u then u gives you ü.

On iPhone/Android

Long-press any letter on the keyboard. A popup shows all available accented versions. Slide to the one you want and release. This is probably the easiest method across all devices.

Common Words That Need Accents

English borrows tons of words from other languages. Here are ones you should be using accents with (but probably aren't):

• café — not cafe
• résumé — not resume (which means "to start again")
• naïve — not naive
• cliché — not cliche
• fiancé/fiancée — not fiance
• exposé — not expose
• jalapeño — not jalapeno
• piña colada — not pina colada

Are most people going to notice if you skip the accent? Probably not. But getting it right shows attention to detail. And in professional writing or typography, these things matter.

For more special characters, browse our special characters for names or our complete guide to typing special symbols on any device.