Maybe you’ve heard people refer to ‘accents’ when writing certain words. Or maybe you’ve just noticed the marks above letters in some words. If these seem mysterious to you, you’re in the right place! That’s because we’re looking at how to use diacritics correctly.
A diacritic is a mark that shows how a word is pronounced. We don’t use them in English often, but you will see them in words borrowed from languages such as French and Spanish.
A few common diacritics you might have seen include the following:
Informally, all of these marks are often called ‘accents’, but technically this only applies to a few marks (e.g. the acute and grave accents). All of them are diacritics, though, so this is the best term to use for these marks.
As mentioned above, we don’t typically use diacritics in English words. But we do use them in non-English loanwords. These include terms such as ‘jalapeño’ or ‘café’, which were originally borrowed from other languages but are now common in English.
Some loanwords have been anglicised and can now be written with or without the diacritics (e.g. ‘jalapeno’ and ‘cafe’). Some terms have even lost their diacritics completely and are now always written without them in English (e.g. ‘muesli’, which used to be written as ‘müesli’).
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But there are also some words that are conventionally written with diacritics, such as ‘fiancée’ or ‘naïve’. It is usually better to include diacritics in these terms, especially in formal writing. If you are unsure whether to use a diacritic in a term, look it up online or ask a proofreader.
But what about the practical side of using diacritics? How does it work when your computer has a keyboard without these symbols? The good news is that Microsoft Word makes this easy.
With many loanwords, the autocorrect function will add diacritics as you type. But for other words, you have a choice between keyboard shortcuts and the Symbol menu. The latter works by:
This is a slightly long process for adding a single letter, but Word will add any symbols you use to the quick-access menu (i.e. the symbols available without clicking More Symbols…). This means you can easily add the same letters again should you need to use them more than once.
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