Ask most people whether English uses accent marks and they’ll say no. English is that plain, utilitarian language that gets by on 26 letters and a handful of punctuation marks — no tildes, no umlauts, no circumflexes needed.
But that answer is only partly right. English actually uses accent marks more than most native speakers realize — in borrowed words, proper names, poetry, and even some everyday writing. The full story is more interesting than a simple yes or no.
The Short Answer
English does not use accent marks in its native vocabulary. Words that originated in Old English — hand, house, walk, bread, night — have never needed them. English spelling handles pronunciation through letter combinations and context rather than diacritical marks.
But English is a language that has borrowed enthusiastically from almost every other language it has encountered, and many of those borrowed words arrived with their accent marks still attached. Some kept them. Some lost them over time. And some are in the middle of that journey right now, with careful writers still using the accent and casual writers dropping it.
English Words That Still Use Accent Marks
You probably write or read many of these regularly without thinking of them as “accented” words:
From French:
- café — the acute accent signals the final syllable is pronounced, not silent
- résumé — without accents, “resume” means to continue; with them, it’s your CV
- fiancé / fiancée — the accent distinguishes the male and female forms
- cliché — widely used with the accent in formal writing
- sauté — the accent keeps the final syllable from going silent
- rosé — without the accent, you’re just talking about the color pink
- née — used to indicate a person’s birth name, as in “Jane Smith, née Jones”
- entrée — still commonly written with the accent in American English
- première — used in arts and entertainment writing
- naïve / naïveté — the diaeresis signals two separate vowel sounds
From Spanish:
- jalapeño — the ñ is widely retained in English writing
- piñata — same
- señor / señora — kept in formal and educational contexts
From other languages:
- façade — from French; the cedilla softens the c
- über — borrowed from German, widely used in informal English to mean “extremely”
- smörgåsbord — Swedish, occasionally written with its original characters
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When Accents Change Meaning in English
In most cases, dropping the accent from a borrowed English word is a spelling error — mildly sloppy but not catastrophically confusing. But in a few cases, the accent genuinely distinguishes between two different words:
- résumé (a CV) vs. resume (to start again) — the most important distinction in professional writing
- rosé (a pink wine) vs. rose (a flower, or past tense of rise)
- exposé (a revealing report) vs. expose (to uncover)
- passé (out of fashion) vs. passe (a fencing term)
- lamé (a metallic fabric) vs. lame (weak or injured)
In professional writing, getting these right matters. Writing “I updated my resume” when you mean résumé is the kind of error that makes careful readers wince.
The Diaeresis: English’s Own Accent Mark
English actually has its own diacritical mark with a genuine grammatical purpose — the diaeresis (two dots above a vowel, like ï or ë). It signals that two adjacent vowels should be pronounced separately rather than as a single sound.
You’ll find it in:
- naïve — the ï signals the a and i are separate syllables: na-EEV, not NAYV
- Noël — the ë separates the o and e: no-EL, not NOEL as one syllable
- coöperate — this old-fashioned spelling, famously used by The New Yorker for decades, prevented “cooperate” from being read as “COO-perate”
- reëlect — same principle, now largely abandoned in favor of a hyphen: re-elect
The diaeresis has fallen out of fashion in most English writing — we now use hyphens or just trust readers to figure it out. But it lingers in names like Zoë, Chloë, and Brontë, where it still does useful work.
The New Yorker’s famous house style on the diaeresis is well documented.
English Names With Accent Marks
Some English-language proper names carry accent marks, either inherited from another language or chosen for stylistic distinction:
- Zoë — the diaeresis ensures ZO-ee, not ZOE as one syllable
- Chloë — same principle
- Renée — from French, the accent is often retained
- Brontë — the Brontë family added the diaeresis to their name to ensure it was pronounced as two syllables: BRON-tee, not BRONT
- Beyoncé — the acute accent signals the final syllable: be-YON-say
When a person’s name includes an accent mark, using it correctly is a matter of respect. Dropping the accent from someone’s name — especially in formal writing — is considered careless at best.
Did Old English Use Accent Marks?
It did — and this is where the story gets genuinely interesting. Old English manuscripts used a mark called the macron (a horizontal line above a vowel, like ā) to indicate a long vowel sound. Middle English poetry used the grave accent to signal that a final -e should be pronounced as a separate syllable — a distinction that mattered for meter in verse.
As English spelling gradually standardized over the centuries, these marks were dropped. The language found other ways to signal pronunciation — through spelling conventions, word position, and eventually just reader familiarity. The accent marks became unnecessary and quietly disappeared.
So in a sense, English didn’t always lack accent marks — it outgrew them.
Are English Accent Marks Disappearing?
Many borrowed words gradually shed their accents as they become more thoroughly absorbed into English. This is a natural process — the more familiar a word becomes, the less its foreign origins feel relevant.
Words that have largely lost their accents in common usage:
- hotel — originally hôtel in French
- elite — originally élite
- role — originally rôle
- depot — originally dépôt
- naive — increasingly written without the diaeresis in casual contexts
Words still in transition — where both forms appear in edited English prose — include résumé/resume, café/cafe, and naïve/naive. Style guides differ on these. The Associated Press Stylebook, for example, recommends dropping most accent marks in English text, while many book publishers retain them.
Should You Use Accent Marks in English Writing?
The practical answer depends on context:
- In formal or professional writing — use accents where they appear in standard dictionaries, especially when they distinguish meaning (résumé vs. resume)
- In people’s names — always use the person’s preferred spelling, accents included
- In casual writing — dropping most accents is widely accepted and rarely noticed
- In academic writing — follow your style guide; most require accents in borrowed words
When in doubt, a good dictionary is your most reliable guide. If Merriam-Webster shows the accent, it belongs there.
How to Type English Accent Marks
Now that you know English does use accent marks — at least some of the time — you may need to type them. The most common ones you’ll encounter in English writing are the acute accent (é, as in résumé and café) and the diaeresis (ë, ï, as in Noël and naïve).
For detailed instructions on typing these characters on your specific device, see our guides for Windows, Mac, iPhone, Android, and Chromebook. The same methods that handle French and Spanish accents work perfectly for English borrowed words too.
Conclusion
English doesn’t use accent marks the way French or Spanish does — but it hasn’t abandoned them entirely either. They survive in borrowed vocabulary, in proper names, and in situations where they do genuine work distinguishing one word from another.
The next time you write résumé, café, naïve, or Zoë, you’re using accent marks in English. You just might not have thought of them that way before.
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