French uses five small marks that sit on top of (or under) letters and change what those letters mean. They are not decoration and they are not optional: leaving one out is a spelling mistake, the same way teh is a spelling mistake in English. Once you learn what each mark does, French spelling stops being mysterious — every accent is doing one of three jobs: marking a sound, marking a missing letter from history, or distinguishing two words that would otherwise look identical.
This page surveys all five marks in one place. Each one has a dedicated page for the details; here we want you to leave with a clear mental map of who does what.
The five diacritics at a glance
| Mark | Name | Letters it appears on | Main job |
|---|---|---|---|
| ´ | accent aigu (acute) | é only | marks closed /e/ sound |
| ` | accent grave (grave) | è, à, ù | è marks open /ɛ/; à and ù only disambiguate |
| ˆ | accent circonflexe (circumflex) | â, ê, î, ô, û | marks a historical lost letter; sometimes disambiguates |
| ¸ | cédille (cedilla) | ç only | keeps c soft (/s/) before a, o, u |
| ¨ | tréma (diaeresis) | ë, ï, ü (rarely ÿ) | splits two vowels that would otherwise merge |
Notice how restricted each mark is: the acute only ever appears on e, the cedilla only on c, the tréma only on vowels that follow another vowel. There are no "accents you can scatter on letters" — every mark has a specific home.
Accent aigu: é
The acute accent appears only on the letter e. It marks the closed /e/ sound — roughly the vowel of English say but without the gliding y at the end.
J'ai étudié le français à l'université.
I studied French at university.
Tu as déjà mangé ? J'ai préparé du café.
Have you eaten already? I made some coffee.
You will see é constantly: it is the marker of past participles of -er verbs (parlé, mangé, étudié, regardé), it begins many words borrowed from Latin or Greek (école, étude, économie, électricité), and it ends many feminine nouns (société, beauté, vérité). When you see e without an accent in those positions, the word is almost certainly misspelled.
Accent grave: è, à, ù
The grave accent does two completely different jobs depending on which vowel carries it.
On e (è), it marks the open /ɛ/ sound — roughly the vowel of English bet. Note that the audible contrast is between é (closed /e/) and è (open /ɛ/): mer (sea) and mère (mother) are actually homophones, both /mɛʁ/, because the bare e before a final pronounced consonant already opens to /ɛ/. The point is that è always marks the open vowel, even in positions where you might otherwise expect a closed one.
Ma mère habite près de la mer.
My mother lives near the sea.
Mon père espère que je viendrai très tôt.
My dad hopes I'll come very early.
On a (à) and on u (ù), the grave accent makes no sound difference at all. Its only job is to distinguish homographs — pairs of words that would otherwise be spelled the same:
| With grave | Without grave | How to tell them apart |
|---|---|---|
| à (to, at) | a (has — verb avoir) | à is a preposition; a is the verb |
| là (there) | la (the, fem.) | là points at a place; la is an article |
| où (where) | ou (or) | où is a question word or relative; ou joins alternatives |
| çà (here, in 'çà et là') | ça (that, this) | çà is archaic; almost only in fixed phrase 'çà et là' |
Je vais à Paris où ma sœur habite.
I'm going to Paris where my sister lives.
Tu préfères le thé ou le café ?
Do you prefer tea or coffee?
The ù is a curiosity of French spelling: it appears in exactly one word in everyday use — où (where). Every keyboard has a ù key, and almost no native speaker ever types it for anything else.
For the deep dive on choosing between é and è, see spelling/accent-grave-vs-aigu.
Accent circonflexe: â, ê, î, ô, û
The circumflex is the most fun of the diacritics because it usually tells a story. In most words, it marks a letter that used to be there and dropped out — almost always an s. Knowing this gives English speakers a free vocabulary trick: many circumflex words have English cognates with the s still in place.
| French (with circumflex) | English cognate (s preserved) |
|---|---|
| forêt | forest |
| hôpital | hospital |
| île | isle |
| côte | coast |
| fenêtre | (from older 'fenestre') |
| pâte | paste |
| hâte | haste |
| août | August (vowel collapse, not -s loss) |
Nous avons passé l'été à la côte, dans une petite île.
We spent the summer on the coast, on a little island.
La fenêtre de l'hôpital donne sur la forêt.
The hospital window looks out on the forest.
The circumflex has a second job: like the grave on à and ù, it can distinguish homographs. The standard set:
| With circumflex | Without | Distinction |
|---|---|---|
| dû (past participle of devoir) | du (partitive: some) | "had to" vs "some" |
| mûr (ripe) | mur (wall) | adjective vs noun |
| sûr (sure, certain) | sur (on) | adjective vs preposition |
| jeûne (a fast — abstention) | jeune (young) | noun vs adjective |
Je suis sûr qu'il a dû partir tôt.
I'm sure he must have left early.
After the 1990 reform, the circumflex is optional on i and u in many words (île or ile, août or aout, connaître or connaitre) — except where it distinguishes meaning, where it stays. See spelling/1990-reform for the full list.
Cédille: ç
The cedilla is the little hook under the c. It appears only on c, and only before a, o, u. Its single job is to keep the c pronounced /s/ when the spelling would otherwise produce /k/.
The underlying French rule is:
- c before e, i, y is already /s/ — no cedilla needed: ceci, cinq, cycle.
- c before a, o, u is /k/ by default: café, copain, cuisine.
- To force the /s/ sound before a, o, u, write ç: ça, garçon, reçu.
Ça va, François ? J'ai reçu ton message.
How's it going, François? I got your message.
Le garçon a commandé une leçon particulière.
The boy ordered a private lesson.
You will never see ç before e, i, y — it would be redundant. The full treatment, including the verb forms that require it (nous commençons, je plaçais, il aperçut), is on spelling/c-cedilla.
The capital exists: FRANÇOIS, ÇA VA. Older typography sometimes dropped the cedilla on capitals; modern French standard is to keep it.
Tréma: ë, ï, ü
The tréma (also called diaeresis) is the pair of dots over a vowel. It signals that two adjacent vowels are pronounced separately rather than fusing into a single sound.
Without the tréma, certain vowel pairs in French automatically merge:
- ai normally fuses to /ɛ/ or /e/: mais /mɛ/ "but"
- oi normally fuses to /wa/: roi /ʁwa/ "king"
- ui normally fuses to /ɥi/: cuisine /kɥizin/
The tréma on the second vowel breaks them apart:
| Without tréma | With tréma | Meaning shift |
|---|---|---|
| mais /mɛ/ | maïs /ma.is/ | "but" vs "corn" |
| (fusion) | naïf, naïve /na.if, na.iv/ | "naïve" — two syllables |
| (fusion) | Noël /nɔ.ɛl/ | "Christmas" — two syllables |
| (fusion) | héroïne /e.ʁɔ.in/ | "heroine" — vowel break preserved |
Joyeux Noël ! On mange du maïs avec la dinde.
Merry Christmas! We're having corn with the turkey.
Elle est naïve, mais incroyablement intelligente.
She's naive, but incredibly intelligent.
The tréma also shows up on a few feminine adjectives (aiguë "sharp, fem.", ambiguë "ambiguous, fem.") and famously on certain proper names (Saint-Saëns, Citroën, Israël). Under the 1990 reform, the tréma can sometimes shift onto the u itself: aigüe alongside aiguë — both are correct.
A reading clue: the circumflex as a fossil
Of all the diacritics, the circumflex is the one that rewards reading carefully. Beyond forêt/forest and hôpital/hospital, it shows up wherever an old s (sometimes another letter) was once pronounced and has dropped out of speech without dropping out of writing.
Le château se dresse au sommet de la côte.
The castle stands at the top of the coast/hillside.
That's château (← castel — compare English castle) and côte (← costa — compare coast). Two circumflexes, two ghost s-letters.
Cette pâte à pain doit reposer pendant deux heures.
This bread dough needs to rest for two hours.
Pâte — compare English paste. Once you start looking, you find it everywhere.
Source-language comparison
For English speakers, the most important thing to understand is that French diacritics are not optional in the way English contractions are optional. don't and do not are stylistic choices; été and ete are two completely different things — the first is a French word for "summer", the second is a misspelling that wouldn't pass a grade-school dictation.
Three further surprises for English speakers:
- The cedilla under c is a different letter, functionally. A French keyboard has a dedicated key for ç; software treats it as a separate character. The same is true of é (with its own key on AZERTY keyboards).
- You can predict pronunciation from spelling reliably. Once you know what each mark does, you can read an unfamiliar French word out loud with high accuracy. This is much more predictable than English, where cough, dough, through, thorough all spell the same vowel sequence differently.
- The reverse is not as reliable. From hearing /o/, you can't tell whether to write o, au, eau, ô. The diacritics help on the spelling-to-sound side, less on the sound-to-spelling side. This is why French schoolchildren spend years on dictation.
Common Mistakes
❌ J'ai eté à l'ecole hier matin.
Incorrect — été and école both need acute accents.
✅ J'ai été à l'école hier matin.
I was at school yesterday morning.
❌ Je vais a Paris ou ma soeur habite.
Incorrect — missing à (preposition), missing où (where). Also sœur uses the ligature œ.
✅ Je vais à Paris où ma sœur habite.
I'm going to Paris where my sister lives.
❌ Nous commencons la lecon avec François.
Incorrect — commençons and leçon both require cedilla to keep /s/.
✅ Nous commençons la leçon avec François.
We're starting the lesson with François.
❌ Le mais pousse bien dans cette région.
Misleading — without tréma this reads 'but' (a conjunction). The grain is maïs with tréma.
✅ Le maïs pousse bien dans cette région.
Corn grows well in this region.
❌ Joyeux Noel à toute la famille.
Incorrect — Noël requires the tréma to mark the split vowels.
✅ Joyeux Noël à toute la famille.
Merry Christmas to the whole family.
Key takeaways
- Five marks, five jobs. The acute (é) marks closed /e/. The grave marks open /ɛ/ on e, and distinguishes homographs on a and u. The circumflex marks a historical lost letter (usually s) and distinguishes a small set of homographs. The cedilla keeps c soft before a, o, u. The tréma splits two vowels that would otherwise merge.
- Diacritics are not optional. Forgetting them is a spelling error, not a typographic shortcut.
- The circumflex is a reading clue: many circumflex words have English cognates with the lost s visible (forêt/forest, hôpital/hospital, île/isle).
- ù appears in exactly one common French word: où (where).
- ç appears only before a, o, u; before e, i, y the c is already soft.
- The 1990 reform made the circumflex optional on i and u in many words but kept it where it distinguishes meaning (dû, mûr, sûr, jeûne).
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Start learning French→Related Topics
- L'Orthographe Française: OverviewA1 — A map of French spelling: the five diacritics (acute, grave, circumflex, cedilla, tréma), the apostrophe and elision, the silent-letter system that makes pronunciation diverge from spelling, and the 1990 reform that left two correct spellings standing side by side.
- Accent Grave vs Aigu: choisir le bonA2 — How to know whether to write é or è — the syllable-structure rule, the verbs that flip between the two, and the small set of à/ù words where the grave isn't about sound at all.
- Le Ç: cedillaA2 — The c-cedilla rule in full: when it appears, when it never appears, why verbs in -cer need it in some forms but not others, and the small set of high-frequency words where forgetting it changes the pronunciation.
- Règles d'Apostrophe: élisionA1 — How French elision works: the small list of words that drop their final vowel before another vowel, the silent-h that allows it, the aspirated-h that blocks it, and the special case of si — which elides only before il(s).
- É vs È vs Ê: les trois e accentuésA2 — The three accented e's of French — closed /e/, open /ɛ/, and the historical circumflex — with the spelling-to-sound rules English speakers most often miss.
- La Réforme Orthographique de 1990C1 — The 1990 spelling reform: optional circumflex on i and u, simplified compounds, regularized plurals, and a handful of rewritten words — all officially correct alongside their traditional forms.