Accent Aigu (´): The Acute Accent on é, á, ń, Not the Grave

Which way does the accent aigu lean, and how is it not the grave?

The accent aigu climbs to the right. Larousse (opens in a new tab) describes it as an accent that slopes down from right to left, used in French to note the closed e. Its partner, the accent grave (opens in a new tab), slopes down from left to right. Read both from the bottom: the acute in é rises, the grave in è falls. Where each language writes the grave has its own page, the grave accent.

The name means sharp. Wiktionary traces French aigu (opens in a new tab) to Latin acūtus, sharp, the same word English borrowed as acute. Its entry for accent aigu (opens in a new tab) calls the term a calque of Latin accentus acūtus. The Latin in turn copies the Ancient Greek prosōidía oxús, sharp accent. Treccani adds that Latin took its acute, grave and circumflex from Greek. They noted the high or low pitch of the voice, not the force of a syllable.

Acute vs grave, mark by mark and language by language:

	Acute (accent aigu)	Grave (accent grave)	Cited from
Shape	slopes down from right to left: ´	slopes down from left to right: `	Larousse
Mark on a letter	U+0301 COMBINING ACUTE ACCENT	U+0300 COMBINING GRAVE ACCENT	Unicode names list
Symbol on its own	U+00B4 ACUTE ACCENT	U+0060 GRAVE ACCENT, also called backtick	Unicode names list
French	only on e: the closed sound of dé	the open e of près; on a and u it tells words apart, as in où	OQLF
Italian	a closed e, as in perché	an open e or o, as in caffè and però; by convention every final a, i and u	Treccani
Portuguese	a stressed open vowel, as in fé and nó	only on a, for a joined with a, as in à and àquele	Priberam
Spanish	the written accent of a stressed syllable	none: the academy's stroke always goes down from right to left	FundéuRAE
Vietnamese	dấu sắc, the rising tone	dấu huyền, the falling tone	Wiktionary
Polytonic Greek	oxia	varia	Unicode ch. 7
Pinyin	the second tone	the fourth tone	Unicode names list

French met the acute first. The OQLF's history of the accent aigu (opens in a new tab) calls it the first accent of French. It was written regularly at the end of words from 1530, inside words only from the 18th century. In the same office's overview (opens in a new tab), some accents took the place of a silent s: eschole became école.

For two centuries the two strokes were not kept apart. The OQLF's page on the sound of the grave (opens in a new tab) says 16th- and 17th-century writers still put an acute where the grave stands now: accés, cyprés. The é and è sounds were not yet told apart.

The alternation survives inside word families: fidèle beside fidélité, mystère beside mystérieux. Today's French rules, the 1990 changes included, are on the e with accent and French alphabet pages.

The angle of the stroke is not fixed either. Chapter 7 of the Unicode Standard (opens in a new tab) says U+0301 is drawn steeper in Polish than in French. Over Greek, where it is the oxia, it can stand nearly upright. Earlier editions of the standard even showed the Greek tonos as a vertical line by mistake. It is still one mark. In our Node.js 26 run, NFC turned ά written with the oxia, U+1F71, into ά with the tonos, U+03AC.

What does the acute accent tell a reader, from Spanish stress to Polish ś?

One stroke does several different jobs: it marks stress, length, a vowel of another quality, a new consonant or a tone. The usage map above shows which CLDR alphabets hold which letters; the table below says what the mark tells a reader in each.

Language	Letters	What the acute tells the reader	Cited from
Spanish	á é í ó ú	the stressed syllable, where the spelling rules call for a written accent	FundéuRAE
Portuguese	á é í ó ú	a stressed vowel that is open: má, fé, nó	Priberam
French	é	a closed e, against the open è and the plain e of de	OQLF
Italian	é	a closed e, as at the end of perché	Treccani
Czech	á é í ó ú ý	a long vowel: pas against pás	ÚJČ
Slovak	á é í ó ú ý ĺ ŕ	length; the name dĺžeň comes from dlhý, long	Wiktionary
Hungarian	á é í ó ú	a long vowel; ö and ü take the double acute instead	AkH 12
Irish	á é í ó ú	a long vowel, under the name síneadh fada	Wiktionary
Icelandic	á é í ó ú ý	another vowel, neither stress nor length: a is [a], á is [au]	Ministry of Education
Polish	ć ń ó ś ź	another sound: ś is /ɕ/, ń is /ɲ/, and ó is said /u/	Wiktionary
Vietnamese	á é í ó ú ý, and ấ ắ ế ố ớ ứ	the sắc tone, a rising pitch	Wiktionary, Unicode ch. 7

Portuguese and Italian read the same stroke in opposite ways. Priberam (opens in a new tab) defines the Portuguese acento agudo as the mark of a stressed vowel when it is open, as in fé, nó and égua. Treccani's entry on the written accent (opens in a new tab) gives the Italian acute to the closed e of perché and the grave to the open e of caffè. It adds that no Italian word ends in ó. The o with accent and Italian alphabet pages go word by word.

Across Central Europe the stroke means length. The Czech language institute's handbook (opens in a new tab) sets short i, e, a, o, u against long í, é, á, ó, ú. Length alone can change a word: pas against pás. Czech calls the mark čárka (opens in a new tab), which is also its word for a comma. Slovak says dĺžeň (opens in a new tab), named for the long vowels it notes. The Czech alphabet and Slovak alphabet pages give the word pairs.

Irish uses the stroke the same way and names it for the job. Wiktionary defines síneadh fada (opens in a new tab) as the acute accent used in Irish to show a long vowel. Its entry for fada (opens in a new tab) gives the adjective's meaning: long.

Icelandic breaks the pattern. The Ministry of Education's booklet Íslenska – í senn forn og ný (opens in a new tab) says the accents over Icelandic vowels mark neither stress nor length. They stand for a different sound. Its example is a, said [a], against á, a diphthong, [au]. The Icelandic alphabet and y with accent pages give word pairs and the í or ý choice.

Polish puts the stroke on consonants. Wiktionary transcribes ś (opens in a new tab) as /ɕ/, which its entry for ɕ (opens in a new tab) calls a voiceless alveolo-palatal sibilant. It gives ń (opens in a new tab) as /ɲ/, the palatal nasal (opens in a new tab) that Spanish spells ñ. Over a vowel the stroke changes the vowel. Wiktionary transcribes ó (opens in a new tab) as /u/ and lists its Polish names, among them o z kreską. The Polish alphabet, s with accent and z with accent pages cover the letters one by one.

Vietnamese makes the stroke a tone mark. Wiktionary defines dấu sắc (opens in a new tab) as the acute accent and the rising sắc tone. Its partner, dấu huyền (opens in a new tab), is the grave and the falling tone. Unicode's chapter 7 says to write the tone with U+0301 COMBINING ACUTE ACCENT, not with U+0341 COMBINING ACUTE TONE MARK, despite that name. The Vietnamese alphabet page explains where the tone goes on ấ or ế.

Why does Spanish call the acute accent a tilde, and Czech a čárka?

In Spanish the written accent is a tilde. Wiktionary's entry for tilde (opens in a new tab) says the Spanish word can name any diacritic but mostly means the acute, as in á. In Spain, outside technical writing, it means nothing else. A word that carries the mark lleva tilde. The wavy line of ñ has a name of its own, virgulilla.

FundéuRAE (opens in a new tab) explains the choice. The academy's dictionary defines acento, in its second sense, as a tilde. The tilde, in that definition, is an oblique stroke that goes down from right to left and marks the syllable said with more force.

Calling the stroke tilde keeps it apart from the acento prosódico, the stress you hear in every word. FundéuRAE admits the cost: the ñ's wavy line is called tilde too. The tilde page covers that mark, and the Spanish alphabet when a word takes or loses the stroke.

Most languages name the acute after its shape or its job:

Language	Name	What the name says	Cited from
French	accent aigu	sharp accent	Wiktionary
Spanish	tilde, or acento	the written accent; tilde also covers the mark on ñ	Wiktionary, FundéuRAE
Czech	čárka	a diminutive of čára; also the word for comma	Wiktionary
Slovak	dĺžeň	from dlhý, long	Wiktionary
Polish	kreska	a line; a diacritic closely resembling an acute	Wiktionary
Irish	síneadh fada	fada means long	Wiktionary
Icelandic	broddur	a point, a spike or a sting	Wiktionary
Vietnamese	dấu sắc	the mark of the word sắc, which carries this tone	Wiktionary
Greek	oxia, tonos	oxia in polytonic writing, tonos in modern Greek	Unicode ch. 7

The other names come from Wiktionary's entries for kreska (opens in a new tab), broddur (opens in a new tab) and acute accent (opens in a new tab), whose translation table also gives akut, acento agudo and accento acuto. Unicode's chapter 7 explains the Greek pair. The modern tonos is written with the acute, and polytonic text calls the same stroke oxia, against the grave's varia.

Is the double acute on ő and ű just two acute accents?

No. Unicode gives it a mark of its own, U+030B COMBINING DOUBLE ACUTE ACCENT, which the names list (opens in a new tab) notes for Hungarian and Chuvash. Two acutes typed in a row do not merge into it. In our Node.js 26 run, o followed by U+0301 twice became ó with a loose U+0301 after it under NFC. The letter o followed by U+030B composed into ő, U+0151, and NFD split ő back into o and U+030B, never into acutes.

In Hungarian the two marks do one job. Rule 4 of the Academy's spelling rules (opens in a new tab) lists the short vowels: a, e, i, o, ö, u, ü. The long ones are á, é, í, ó, ő, ú, ű. The vowels that already wear two dots lengthen into ő and ű; the rest take the single stroke. Rule 6 gives words that length alone tells apart, such as bal and bál, or öt and őt.

The Hungarian alphabet page explains why old web pages print õ or ô where ő belongs. On a Mac, Shift, Option and G together type ˝, U+02DD DOUBLE ACUTE ACCENT, in AccentPad's measured table of Apple's Option layer. It is a spacing symbol, so it never lands on an o. The WHATWG list (opens in a new tab) names it ˝, and the letter ő ő.

Why does the Mac accent key stop at a, e, i, o and u?

Apple's dead key for the acute knows the vowels and nothing else. Apple's help (opens in a new tab) describes the accent keys in general. We ran the U.S. and ABC layouts through UCKeyTranslate on macOS 26.6.2 on 2026-10-17. Option+E sets the dead key, and the next key decides the rest:

Keys on a Mac (U.S. or ABC)	Result	Code points
Option+E, then E	é	U+00E9
Option+E, then E held with Shift	É	U+00C9
Option+E, then Space	´, the spacing acute	U+00B4
Shift, Option and E together	´, the spacing acute	U+00B4
Option+E, then C	´c, two characters	U+00B4 U+0063
Option+E, then N, S, Z or Y	the spacing ´ and the plain letter	U+00B4 and the letter

The Polish letters and ý therefore need another route. Apple's help documents press and hold. Hold C until a row of letters appears, then choose ć; N works the same way for ń. For ś, ź and ý, Apple's Character Viewer (opens in a new tab) finds them by name, as the steps below show.

The US International layout has a trap of its own. Microsoft's layout data (opens in a new tab) lists what its apostrophe dead key makes: á é í ó ú ý, their capitals, and ç. An apostrophe before c therefore gives ç, a c with a cedilla, never ć. Apple's US International PC layout did the same in our run, and it typed 'y rather than ý.

Word has a surprise in the same family. Microsoft's table (opens in a new tab) gives Ctrl+' before a vowel or y for á, é, í, ó, ú and ý. The same chord before d gives ð, the letter eth, which has no acute at all. Google's Chromebook help (opens in a new tab) documents the acute on the US International keyboard as the apostrophe, then the letter.

Acute, apostrophe or prime: which ´ did you paste?

Only one of these characters is the acute accent mark that builds é. U+0301 COMBINING ACUTE ACCENT has no width of its own and sits on the letter before it. The names list also calls it the stress mark, and the Greek oxia and tonos. The others are spacing characters that stand beside a letter, and no normalization form fuses them with it.

The keyboard symbol is the usual stowaway. Unicode's chapter 7 says that in ISO/IEC 8859-1 the ´ was ambiguous, a mark to combine or a character of its own. Unicode settles it: U+00B4 is always a spacing character, and accented letters use the combining marks instead. Node.js 26.0.0 (ICU 78.3, Unicode 17.0) gave these results on 2026-10-17:

Typed	NFC gives	NFKC gives
e, then U+0301	é, one character, U+00E9	é
c, then U+0301	ć, U+0107	ć
x, then U+0301	still x and the mark: no x with acute is encoded	unchanged
e, then ´ U+00B4	still e and ´	e, a space and U+0301: the mark lands on the space
e, then ' or ’	unchanged	unchanged
e, then U+0341 COMBINING ACUTE TONE MARK	é: the tone mark is a duplicate of U+0301	é
ά with the oxia, U+1F71	ά with the tonos, U+03AC	ά, U+03AC

The names list keeps a family of lookalikes beside the acute, each with a job of its own:

Glyph	Unicode name and number	Job, per the names list
◌́	U+0301 COMBINING ACUTE ACCENT	the mark on a letter; stress mark; Greek oxia and tonos; the pinyin second tone
´	U+00B4 ACUTE ACCENT	the spacing acute; HTML ´
ˊ	U+02CA MODIFIER LETTER ACUTE ACCENT	a high-rising tone in IPA, primary stress, the Mandarin second tone
ʹ	U+02B9 MODIFIER LETTER PRIME	stress; transliterates the Cyrillic soft sign
′	U+2032 PRIME	minutes and feet; HTML ′
'	U+0027 APOSTROPHE	the neutral typewriter quote; HTML '
’	U+2019 RIGHT SINGLE QUOTATION MARK	the preferred character for an apostrophe
΄	U+0384 GREEK TONOS	the spacing tonos; NFKC makes it a space and U+0301
´	U+1FFD GREEK OXIA	canonically the same character as U+00B4
◌̋	U+030B COMBINING DOUBLE ACUTE ACCENT	Hungarian ő and ű
˝	U+02DD DOUBLE ACUTE ACCENT	the spacing double acute; HTML ˝

On the web, the WHATWG list maps ´ to the spacing U+00B4, not to a letter: é is é, and ć is ć. UnicodeData (opens in a new tab) records each such letter as its base plus U+0301. That is why e followed by U+0301 and é count as the same text.