A with accent á à â ä å ā

Which accented a do you need?

The accent tells you the language. Pick the keyboard for yours and every letter it needs is one click away.

á a with acute: A short stroke rising to the right. Marks stress in Spanish, vowel quality in French and Italian, and long vowels in Hungarian, Czech and Irish. Used in Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Slovak, Hungarian.

à a with grave: A short stroke falling to the right. Common in French and Italian, where it changes pronunciation or distinguishes words such as a and à. Used in French, Portuguese, Italian, Dutch, Vietnamese.

â a with circumflex: A small inverted V. In French it usually marks a vowel that once had a following s (forêt, hôtel). Also used in Portuguese, Romanian, Welsh and Esperanto. Used in French, Portuguese, Romanian, Turkish, Vietnamese.

ä a with diaeresis: Two dots above a letter. Called an umlaut in German (ä, ö, ü), where it changes the vowel sound, and a diaeresis in French, Dutch and Spanish, where it shows two vowels are pronounced separately. Used in German, Slovak, Swedish, Finnish, Estonian.

å a with ring above: A small circle above the letter. Used in Swedish, Norwegian and Danish å and Czech ů. Used in Swedish, Norwegian, Danish, Finnish.

ā a with macron: A straight bar above the letter marking a long vowel. Used in Latvian, Māori, Hawaiian and in romanised Japanese and Latin. Used in Latvian, Hawaiian, Māori, Chinese Pinyin.

How to type a with an accent on Windows

Alt codes

Hold Alt, type the code on the numeric keypad with Num Lock on, then release Alt. The number row above the letters does not work.

ā ă ą ǎ ȧ ạ ả ấ ầ ẫ ậ ẩ ắ ằ ẵ ặ ẳ ǟ ǻ ǡ have no classic Alt code. Use one of the methods below for those.

US-International keyboard (dead keys)

Switch to the United States-International layout (Settings → Time & Language → Language → English → Options → Add a keyboard). Then press the accent key, release it, and press the letter:

• ' then the letter gives á
• ` then the letter gives à
• Shift+6 (^) then the letter gives â
• Shift+` (~) then the letter gives ã
• Shift+' (") then the letter gives ä
• AltGr+A gives á directly
• AltGr+Q gives ä directly
• AltGr+W gives å directly
• AltGr+Z gives æ directly

Emoji and symbol panel

Press Win+., open the Symbols tab (Ω), choose Latin symbols and click the letter. Works in every app and needs no numpad. Character Map (search it in the Start menu) does the same for older versions of Windows.

How to type a with an accent on a Mac

Press and hold

Hold the A key for a second. A small menu appears with à á â ä æ ã å ā. Press the number shown under the one you want, or click it. Hold Shift first for the capital.

Option dead keys

Press the Option combination, release it, then press the letter.

• Option+E, A gives á, Option+E, Shift+A gives Á
• Option+`, A gives à, Option+`, Shift+A gives À
• Option+I, A gives â, Option+I, Shift+A gives Â
• Option+U, A gives ä, Option+U, Shift+A gives Ä
• Option+A gives å, Option+Shift+A gives Å
• Option+N, A gives ã, Option+N, Shift+A gives Ã

Character Viewer

Press Control+⌘+Space, type "a with" in the search box and double-click the letter. For carons, macrons, ogoneks and other marks that the US layout cannot type, add the ABC Extended input source (System Settings → Keyboard → Input Sources) which has dead keys for all of them.

How to type a with an accent on iPhone, iPad and Android

1. Press and hold the A key.
2. A pop-up shows à á â ä æ ã å ā.
3. Slide your finger onto the one you want and release.

For frequent use, save a shortcut: on iPhone go to Settings → General → Keyboard → Text Replacement; on Android open Gboard → Dictionary → Personal dictionary. Enter the accented letter as the phrase and a short code as the shortcut.

Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Google Docs

Microsoft Word

Word has built-in accent shortcuts. Press the combination, release it, then type the letter:

• Ctrl+', a gives á
• Ctrl+`, a gives à
• Ctrl+Shift+^, a gives â
• Ctrl+Shift+:, a gives ä
• Ctrl+Shift+@, a gives å
• Ctrl+Shift+~, a gives ã

For any form, type its Unicode hex code and press Alt+X: 00E1 → á, 00E0 → à, 00E2 → â, 00E4 → ä, and so on. You can also use Insert → Symbol → More Symbols with the subset set to Latin-1 Supplement or Latin Extended-A. AutoCorrect (File → Options → Proofing) can replace a code such as a~ with the letter automatically.

Excel and Google Sheets

Alt codes and paste work in cells. For a formula, use =UNICHAR(225) in Excel or =CHAR(225) in Google Sheets to get á.

Google Docs

Go to Insert → Special characters, then search "a with" or draw the letter in the sketch box. Docs also accepts Alt codes on Windows and Option dead keys on Mac. Under Tools → Preferences → Substitutions you can make Docs replace a code of your choosing with the accented letter.

A with accent in HTML, CSS and code

Because these are ordinary Unicode characters, you can paste them straight into any UTF-8 file. The escapes only matter when the encoding is uncertain or you cannot type the letter.

Building any accent with combining marks

If you need a form Unicode does not precompose, or you are typing in an app that only has a plain a, type the letter and follow it with a combining mark. The mark sits on the previous character. Click any example to copy the two-character sequence.

In Word, type the letter, then the mark's hex code (for example 0301 for acute) and press Alt+X. On a Mac the Character Viewer lists them under Combining Diacritical Marks. Note that search engines and spell checkers treat a combined sequence differently from a precomposed letter, so prefer the precomposed form when one exists.

Troubleshooting

• The Alt code types something else. Add the leading zero (Alt+0241, not Alt+241) and use the numeric keypad with Num Lock on. Laptops without a numpad need Win + . instead.
• Press-and-hold shows nothing. On a Mac, key repeat may be enabled instead of the accent menu; run defaults write -g ApplePressAndHoldEnabled -bool true in Terminal and log out. On phones, the letter may not be in your keyboard's language.
• Wrong accent. á (acute) and à (grave) look similar at small sizes but are different letters; a search for one will not find the other.
• A box or question mark appears after pasting. The font in that app lacks the glyph. Switch to a font with full Latin coverage such as Arial, Calibri, Noto Sans or Segoe UI.

Frequently asked questions