Read about more French loanwords like soirée here. In English, a number of French loanwords may use this mark. In Spanish, this character is used over vowels to indicate which syllable in a word is stressed. The acute accent is used over the letter e in French to indicate the vowel should be pronounced as ay. (Or is that just us … and our light reading?) Acute accent (é) We should note that this list is not exhaustive and there are even more marks we won’t cover, such as the streg, which you may encounter in Denmark or the titlo you may see in Glagolitic manuscripts. Let’s take a look at different types of diacritical marks you might encounter. Types of diacritical marksĮnglish is an odd language for many, many reasons, but its lack of commonly used diacritical marks is notable considering just how often they are used in other languages. For example, the French hôtel is simply hotel in English.Įven when writing in English, you may encounter loanwords or foreign language words that do make use of many different kinds of diacritical marks. Because English loves to be weird, though, foreign language loanwords sometimes drop their diacritical marks when written in English. When writing English, you’ll typically only need to use them when writing loanwords from other languages, such as the French cliché or the Spanish piñata. That being said, English rarely uses diacritical marks-even though it probably could really benefit from them. Some reasons that diacritical marks might be used include indicating which syllable of a word should be stressed, if a vowel is long or short, or to separate one word from another that has an identical spelling and/or pronunciation. The specific reason behind the usage of a particular diacritical mark will depend on the mark itself and, often, which language it is used in. What is a diacritical mark?Ī diacritical mark, also known as a diacritic, refers to any mark, shape, stroke, or sign added or attached to a letter for a particular reason.
Our quick guide should help you sort all of this out. At the same time, you might want to know how you’d actually type any of these marks using a keyboard. That’s nice and all, but you might be wondering what these marks actually mean and whether or not we ever use them in English. The non-linguists among us may know these lines and shapes as accent marks, but their true name is diacritical marks or diacritics. All of these words have strange lines and symbols above at least one of the letters.
What do all of these words have in common? No, it isn’t some weird logic puzzle. Make sure that NUM LOCK is on before you type the character code.įor example, to insert the euro currency symbol, hold down the ALT key and press 0128 on the numeric keypad.įor more info on using Unicode and ASCII characters, see Insert ASCII or Unicode character codes.Protégé.
HOW TO MAKE E WITH AN ACCENT MARK CODE
The ANSI character for the specified ANSI (decimal) character codeĪLT+the character code (on the numeric keypad) The Unicode character for the specified Unicode (hexadecimal) character codeįor example, to insert the euro currency symbol, type 20AC, and then hold down the ALT key and press X. For example, to type a ô, hold down CTRL, SHIFT and ^, release and type o. To type a lowercase character by using a key combination that includes the SHIFT key, hold down the CTRL+SHIFT+symbol keys simultaneously, and then release them before you type the letter. For example, for è you would press Ctrl + `, release and then type e. For example, to type a copyright symbol ©, hold down the Alt key and type 0169.įor keyboard shortcuts in which you press one key immediately followed by another key, the keys to press are separated by a comma (,).
HOW TO MAKE E WITH AN ACCENT MARK PLUS
In Word and Outlook, you can use accent marks (or diacritical marks) in a document, such as an acute accent, cedilla, circumflex, diaeresis or umlaut, grave accent, or tilde.įor keyboard shortcuts in which you press two or more keys simultaneously, the keys to press are separated by a plus sign (+) in the tables. Word for Microsoft 365 Outlook for Microsoft 365 Word 2021 Outlook 2021 Word 2019 Outlook 2019 Word 2016 Outlook 2016 Word 2013 Outlook 2013 Word 2010 More.