Tildes: referencia completa

This is the comprehensive reference for the Spanish written accent — the tilde. The introductory pages on stress rules and written accent marks cover the core ideas; this page is the lookup. It is organised by function rather than by word, so you can find a rule by asking "what kind of accent is this?" Use it as a reference when you're unsure why a particular word does or doesn't carry an accent.

The page is structured into eight sections:

1. Stress-rule accents
2. Hiatus accents
3. Diacritical accents on monosyllables
4. Interrogatives and exclamatives
5. Special cases (porqué, plurals, -mente adverbs)
6. Compound words
7. Foreign words and acronyms
8. Common errors and the most-confused cases

Section 1: Stress-rule accents

Recap from the stress rules page. Spanish has two default-stress rules; words that defy them carry an accent on the stressed vowel; esdrújulas and sobresdrújulas always carry an accent.

Section 2: Hiatus accents

Recap from the diphthongs and hiatus page. When a weak vowel (i or u) is the stressed vowel in a sequence with a strong vowel (a, e, o), the would-be diphthong is broken into a hiatus — and the weak vowel carries a written accent, regardless of what the general stress rule would say.

This hiatus accent is independent of the stress-rule accent and stacks with it: a word can have a hiatus-marked accent that also happens to fall on the syllable required by the stress rules. Día is a llana ending in a vowel, so by the default rules it would be unaccented (dia read as one syllable /dja/). The hiatus accent does triple duty: it tells you the word is two syllables, where the stress falls, and which vowel is the syllable nucleus.

Triphthong accents

In a triphthong (weak + strong + weak in one syllable), the accent — if needed — goes on the strong vowel.

Section 3: Diacritical accents on monosyllables

Spanish has a small closed list of monosyllabic word pairs distinguished only by the accent. No other monosyllables carry an accent; if there's no homophone to disambiguate from, no accent.

Two monosyllables that learners often expect to be in this list, but aren't:

• ti (object pronoun, "you"): never carries an accent. There is no homophone ti to disambiguate against.
• o (conjunction, "or"): no accent in any context. Until 2010 it was written ó between numerals (5 ó 6) to avoid visual confusion with zero, but that exception was abolished. Always write o.

Learners often over-generalise from mí and write ❌tí. The same logic that keeps ti unaccented also explains why fue, vio, dio, di, fui carry no accent — there's no homophone to disambiguate against.

Section 4: Interrogatives and exclamatives

The wh-words that double as interrogatives, exclamatives, and relatives carry an accent in the first two functions and no accent in the third. The accent stays in indirect questions — sentences that report a question rather than ask one directly.

Direct questions

Indirect / embedded questions

Relative / conjunctive uses (no accent)

Exclamatives

Section 5: Special cases

The porqué / porque / por qué / por que family

The first two are everyday. The third (porqué as a noun) appears in writing and formal speech: no entiendo el porqué de su decisión. The fourth (por que as relative) survives mostly in legal and literary register; modern usage prefers por la que / por el que.

Plurals that change accent

Some Spanish nouns change accentuation when made plural, because the addition of -es (or -s) shifts the stressed syllable's distance from the end of the word.

-mente adverbs

Adverbs formed with -mente preserve the accent (if any) of the base adjective. They also carry a phonetic second stress on -mén-, making them the only Spanish words with two stresses.

Verbs in -eo and -ea

Verbs whose stems end in -e before -o / -a / -an don't generally need accents, because both vowels are strong and form a normal hiatus. Creo, leo, lean, sea, sean — no accents.

But if the stress falls on a weak vowel adjacent to a strong one, the hiatus accent kicks in: leí, leíste, leído.

Section 6: Compound words

Spanish forms compounds in several ways, and the accentuation rules differ by type.

One-word compounds

The stress-and-accent rules apply to the whole word, as if it were a single base form. Any internal accent from the original parts is dropped, except where the word's actual stress requires it.

Hyphenated compounds

When two adjectives or other elements are joined by a hyphen, each retains its own accent. The hyphen preserves their independence.

Adverbs in -mente (covered above)

These behave like hyphenated compounds in the sense that the base adjective keeps its accent.

Section 7: Foreign words and acronyms

Adapted loanwords

Foreign words that have been assimilated into Spanish gain accents per the standard rules. Their original spelling is reshaped to fit Spanish orthography.

Unassimilated foreign words

Words still felt as foreign — often italicised in writing — generally keep their original spelling, with no Spanish accents added.

Acronyms

Acronyms written in all capitals traditionally do not carry accents. The accent rules apply to lowercase letters, not to letterforms that function as a sigla.

Mixed-case acronyms can take accents in the lowercase portions: MásEducación, BárKom — though this is informal and brand-dependent.

Section 8: Common errors and edge cases

The most-confused cases, ranked

1. Vosotros endings -áis, -éis with no accent. Always wrong in peninsular Spanish.
2. Indirect questions with no accent on the wh-word (me preguntó donde estabas — wrong; should be dónde).
3. Demonstrative pronouns with accent (éste, ése, aquél — these are pre-2010 spellings, no longer recommended).
4. Adverbial sólo with accent (also pre-2010, no longer recommended).
5. Ti spelled ❌tí (overgeneralisation from mí).
6. Por qué / porque confusion. Two words + accent for the question, one word + no accent for the answer.
7. Hiatus accents dropped on common verbs: pais for país, leiste for leíste, dia for día.
8. Aún / aun misuse. Aún when you mean "still"; aun when you mean "even."

A handful of tricky individual words

Accents on capital letters

The RAE has been explicit since the 1999 Ortografía: capital letters carry accents when the underlying word requires one. The persistent myth that "capitals don't take accents" is a typewriter-era holdover and is wrong.

The myth exists because old mechanical typewriters could not easily accent capital letters. With modern computer keyboards and proper Spanish keyboard layouts, there is no technical reason to omit the accent, and doing so is a spelling error.

A summary card

If you take only one mental model from this page, take this:

• Stress accent = "stress is not where the default rules predict."
• Hiatus accent = "this weak vowel is stressed against a strong neighbour."
• Diacritical accent = "this monosyllable would otherwise be confused with its homophone twin."
• Interrogative accent = "this wh-word is asking, not connecting."

Every Spanish accent is one of those four. Knowing which one is at work tells you what to write.

Common Mistakes

Key takeaways

• Every Spanish written accent is one of four kinds: stress-rule, hiatus, diacritical (monosyllable), or interrogative.
• The stress rules are: aguda + vowel/n/s = accent; llana + non-vowel/n/s = accent; esdrújula and sobresdrújula always = accent.
• Hiatus accents appear when a weak vowel (i/u) is stressed adjacent to a strong vowel (a/e/o).
• The closed list of diacritical monosyllables must be memorised. Ti is never accented.
• Interrogative wh-words carry accents in direct AND indirect questions, AND exclamations.
• The 2010 RAE reforms abolished the accent on demonstrative pronouns (éste, ése, aquél), on adverbial sólo, and on ó between numerals.
• -mente adverbs keep the original adjective's accent.
• Plurals can shift the stress's distance from the end of the word, adding or removing the need for an accent.
• Capital letters carry accents when the word requires one. The "no accents on capitals" rule is a typewriter-era myth.
• Peninsular vosotros endings -áis, -éis always require an accent. The most common peninsular-specific omission.