Accents

Accents are a kind of diacritic mark used to show the pronunciation or stress in a word. Examples include the acute mark (frappé), umlaut (naïve), circumflex (paper-machê), tilde (señor) and cedilla (façade).

Accents are most common when using words from a non-English language.

Style basics

Minimise accents, particularly on words that have become common in English

café

cafe

façade

facade

Over time, words imported into English from other languages tend to lose their accents. So the first question is whether to use accents at all when writing in English.

The ASG recommends minimising their use, as long as the meaning is clear to your intended audience. Accents can be difficult to format and are prone to error when copying and pasting text.

El Nino relates to the warming of the ocean surface.

This report is full of cliches.

Let’s meet at the cafe on the corner.

However, if you think keeping the accents will help readers make sense of the word and its pronunciation, you can do so. And keep them on the names of people or organisations.

It would be naïve to suggest that one policy change will fix the problem.

François Hollande went to an event at the Musée d’Orsay.

Words to watch

Use accents when there is potential for confusion in the same sentence

resume, résumé

expose, exposé

Some style guides argue that you need accents to differentiate between words that are spelt the same way but have different meanings and pronunciation.

However, in most cases the context will usually make the meaning clear without an accent. On a wine list, for example, you're unlikely to expect a glass of flowers if you order from the Rose rather than the Rosé list.

That said, on the rare occasion that identically spelled words of different meaning appear together in a sentence, you will need to take care if you can’t rephrase.

Please submit your cover letter and resume through our jobs portal.

I’ll resume work on my résumé tonight.

My colleagues gave me a bottle of rosé and a bunch of roses for my birthday.

To insert an accent in MS Word: Insert > Symbols. Select your accent, and note the keyboard shortcut for next time. On a Mac keyboard, you can also hold down the relevant letter key until the accent options appear.