What Is the Grave accent? Meaning, Letters and How to Type It
A short line slanting down to the right. French uses it on à, è and ù, Italian on final stressed vowels (città), Catalan and Portuguese for vowel quality, and Vietnamese and Pinyin for a falling tone.
Letters with the grave accent: à è ò ù ì ỳ ǹ ẁ
Combining character: U+0300
What the grave accent does
A short line slanting down to the right. French uses it on à, è and ù, Italian on final stressed vowels (città), Catalan and Portuguese for vowel quality, and Vietnamese and Pinyin for a falling tone. Unicode encodes 16 precomposed letters with this mark as their first diacritic, and the combining form U+0300 can add it to any other letter.
Languages that use it
Afrikaans, Catalan, Dutch, French, Italian, Maltese, Mandarin Pinyin, Portuguese, Vietnamese, Welsh, Yoruba.
All lowercase letters with the grave accent
Codes and shortcuts
| Letter | Name | Unicode | Alt code | Mac |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| à | a with grave | U+00E0 | Alt+0224 | Option+`, then A |
| è | e with grave | U+00E8 | Alt+0232 | Option+`, then E |
| ò | o with grave | U+00F2 | Alt+0242 | Option+`, then O |
| ù | u with grave | U+00F9 | Alt+0249 | Option+`, then U |
| ì | i with grave | U+00EC | Alt+0236 | Option+`, then I |
| ỳ | y with grave | U+1EF3 | — | — |
| ǹ | n with grave | U+01F9 | — | — |
| ẁ | w with grave | U+1E81 | — | — |
How to type it on any letter
On Windows, hold Alt and type the code from the table, or type the letter followed by U+0300 in Word and press Alt+X. On a Mac, use Unicode Hex Input: type the letter, then hold Option and type 0300. On a Chromebook, type the letter, then Ctrl+Shift+U, 0300, Space.
Copy every letter with the grave accent