Spanish Words with Accents: tú or tu, él or el, está or esta

Why do some short Spanish words take an accent and others not?

Spanish does not put a written accent on one-syllable words. The RAE's own summary of the 2010 Ortografía (opens in a new tab) states it in passing: monosyllables take no accent, except those with a tilde diacrítica. That exception is the first block of the table above, and it is why several of the most frequent Spanish words with accents, in the list further down, are one syllable long: qué, sí, más, él.

FundéuRAE, the foundation the RAE and the Agencia EFE sponsor, quotes the Ortografía in a note of May 2024 on what the diacritic accent (opens in a new tab) is for: telling apart words of the same form but a different meaning, where one of the two is stressed and the other is not. Tú is stressed, tu is not. Él is stressed, el is not. The accent goes on the stressed one.

That rule also explains the words that people accent by mistake:

• ti never takes one. There is no unstressed ti to tell it from, so FundéuRAE writes para ti (opens in a new tab), even though mí and sí carry the mark.
• fue, dio, vio, fui, di, vi take none. They are one syllable, they have no twin, and the general rule wins (FundéuRAE (opens in a new tab)).
• di from decir and di from dar are both stressed, so neither gets the accent: the tilde never separates two stressed words.
• tés, several cups of tea, keeps the accent of té in the plural, while tes are several letters t (FundéuRAE (opens in a new tab)).

Does gracias have an accent mark?

No. Gracias has two syllables, gra and cias, and Wiktionary (opens in a new tab) puts the stress on the first. That makes it a llana, a word stressed on its next-to-last syllable, and it ends in s.

The general rules, as FundéuRAE sums them up (opens in a new tab), mark a llana only when it ends in something other than a vowel, n or s. So gracias, muchas gracias and GRACIAS on a sign are all written without one, and anyone looking for the gracias accent mark is looking for something Spanish never wrote. The whole decision, syllable by syllable, is laid out in the guide to Spanish accents.

Does hola have an accent mark?

No. Ho-la is stressed on its first syllable and ends in a vowel: the plainest case of a Spanish word with no accent. The h is silent, and Wiktionary (opens in a new tab) lists ola, a wave, as a word that sounds the same.

The same rules put the accent on está. Wiktionary (opens in a new tab) stresses it on the last syllable, and a word stressed there that ends in a vowel, n or s takes the mark. The demonstrative esta is stressed on es and ends in a vowel, so it takes none (opens in a new tab). That one accent is the whole difference between "is" and "this".

Do solo and este still need an accent?

No, not since 2010. Before then the rules asked for sólo when it meant only, and for éste, ése or aquél as pronouns, but only where a sentence could be read two ways. The RAE's summary of the 2010 Ortografía (opens in a new tab) says both words are always stressed, so the diacritic accent never applied to them: the accent may be dropped even where the sentence is ambiguous, and the general recommendation is never to write it.

The second edition of the Diccionario panhispánico de dudas (DPD) softened that a little. As FundéuRAE reports it in notes of February 2025, which replace its versions of 2011, for solo (opens in a new tab) and for the demonstratives (opens in a new tab), writing them without the accent is right in every case, and the accent is optional only where the writer sees a real risk of ambiguity.

The neuter esto, eso and aquello never take it: they are always pronouns, so there is nothing to tell them from.

Word and use	Before 2010	Ortografía 2010	DPD, second edition
solo meaning only	sólo, where a sentence was ambiguous	solo, even then; never accent it	solo; sólo optional if the writer sees ambiguity
solo meaning alone	solo	solo	solo, never sólo
este, ese, aquel as pronouns	éste, where a sentence was ambiguous	este, even then; never accent it	este; éste optional if the writer sees ambiguity
este, ese, aquel before a noun	este	este	este

The frequency list further down shows how slowly habits move. Its ó row still holds sólo with the old accent: the subtitles it was counted from keep writing it.

Which Spanish words lost their accent in 2010?

In 2010 the list of Spanish words with accents got a little shorter: a handful of words with two vowels side by side lost theirs. The academies decided in 1999 to count some vowel pairs as one syllable for spelling, whatever the speaker's pronunciation, which made these words one syllable on paper. The 1999 rules still let people who said them as two syllables keep the accent. The 2010 Ortografía (opens in a new tab) removed that option, so they are now written without it:

Written today	What it is, as the RAE lists it
guion, truhan, ion, prion	nouns
crio, crie	forms of criar
guio, guie	forms of guiar
lio, lie	forms of liar
fio, fie	forms of fiar
rio	a form of reír
frio	a form of freír
hui, flui	forms of huir and fluir

The RAE adds that nobody has to change how they say them: the rule is about spelling only. The same edition also dropped the accent on the conjunction o written between figures.

How do question words keep their accent without question marks?

The accent follows the meaning, not the punctuation, and FundéuRAE shows it both ways. An indirect question keeps the accent with no question marks at all: No estoy segura de dónde trabaja Yoli, and Me gustaría saber quién ganará (opens in a new tab) las próximas elecciones. A word inside question marks loses it when it does not ask anything: in ¿Dónde trabajas? ¿Donde me dijiste?, the second donde only points back to a place (FundéuRAE (opens in a new tab)).

A relative with a noun before it never takes the accent, however much the sentence feels like a question. FundéuRAE corrects alguien a quién preguntar (opens in a new tab) to alguien a quien preguntar, and nada qué perder to nada que perder. The test it suggests: if el que, la que or lo que fits in its place, write it bare.

Spanish writes why and because in four ways, and two of them carry the accent (FundéuRAE (opens in a new tab)):

Spelling	What it is	Example
por qué	asks why	¿Por qué no aumenta el número de vivienda protegida?
porqué	a noun, the reason	No sé el porqué de su conducta.
porque	because	Es difícil porque hay tres equipos más de un nivel muy alto.
por que	por plus the relative que	Ese es el motivo por (el) que decidió no ir.

What is the quickest way to type these words?

Typing Spanish words with accents comes down to á, é, í, ó, ú, ñ and ü. On a Mac, Option+E and then the vowel gives á, é, í, ó or ú, and Option+N, then N, gives ñ. On Windows the Alt codes in the table above type them with the number pad, Alt+0225 for á among them. On a phone, hold the plain letter and slide to the accented one.

For more than a word or two, the Spanish keyboard on this site types whole sentences, with ¿ and ¡, and copies them in one go. The guides for the Mac and for Windows cover every other letter.