How to Type a Grave Accent on a Keyboard

One of the more accessible accent marks — here’s every method

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The grave accent ` appears in several contexts — as a standalone accent mark for use with letters (à, è, ì, ò, ù), as the backtick character in programming and Markdown, and as part of various typographic and technical uses.

It’s actually one of the easier accent-related characters to produce because most keyboards have a dedicated backtick key — the challenge is producing the combining version that sits above a letter rather than a standalone character.

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The Difference Between the Backtick and the Combining Grave

These are two different things:

` — the backtick or grave accent as a standalone character (U+0060). Already on your keyboard — it’s the key in the top left corner of most keyboards, to the left of the 1 key, sharing a key with the tilde (~). Press it and you get a standalone grave accent character.

Combining grave accent — the invisible combining character (U+0300) that attaches to the preceding letter, producing à, è, ì, ò, ù and their uppercase equivalents. This is what you need for accented letters in French, Italian, Portuguese, and other languages.

Precomposed characters — single Unicode characters that are a letter with a grave already included: à (U+00E0), è (U+00E8), ì (U+00EC), ò (U+00F2), ù (U+00F9) and their uppercase versions. These are what most people actually want when writing accented text.

For programming and Markdown, the backtick key gives you what you need immediately. For accented letters, the methods below apply.

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The Backtick Key (Standalone Grave)

Already on your keyboard. The backtick/grave key sits in the top left of the main keyboard, to the left of the 1 key. On most keyboard layouts it looks like ` on the lower half and ~ on the upper half (accessed with Shift).

Press it once for a standalone grave accent `. Press Shift + ` for a tilde ~.

This is what you use in Markdown for code formatting, in programming for various purposes (shell commands, template literals in JavaScript, SQL identifier quoting), and anywhere you need the character itself rather than a letter with a grave.

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Mac — Accented Letters With Grave

Method 1: Dead Key Shortcut

Press Option + ` (Option and the backtick key). This places a floating grave accent. Then press the vowel you want to accent:

• Option + `, then a → à
• Option + `, then e → è
• Option + `, then i → ì
• Option + `, then o → ò
• Option + `, then u → ù

For uppercase, use Shift + the vowel as the second keystroke.

This is the method to remember on Mac. The dead key approach is clean and fast once the pattern is familiar.

Method 2: Long Press the Vowel

Hold down any vowel key and a popup appears showing accent variants including the grave version. Press the corresponding number or click the character.

Method 3: Character Viewer

Press Control + Command + Space and search “grave” for the combining character or specific precomposed letters.

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Windows — Accented Letters With Grave

Method 1: Alt Codes (Numpad)

Hold Alt and type the code on the numeric keypad:

Character	Alt Code
à	Alt + 0224
À	Alt + 0192
è	Alt + 0232
È	Alt + 0200
ì	Alt + 0236
Ì	Alt + 0204
ò	Alt + 0242
Ò	Alt + 0210
ù	Alt + 0249
Ù	Alt + 0217

Num Lock must be on. Use the numeric keypad only.

Method 2: US International Keyboard Layout

With the US International keyboard active, the backtick key becomes a dead key — pressing it followed by a vowel produces the grave-accented version:

• ` then a → à
• ` then e → è
• ` then i → ì
• ` then o → ò
• ` then u → ù

To type a standalone backtick with US International active, press ` followed by a space — this produces the standalone character rather than a dead key waiting for a vowel.

To add the US International keyboard: Go to Settings → Time and Language → Language and Region → your language → Options → Add a keyboard → United States-International.

Switch between layouts using Windows + Space.

Method 3: Text Expansion

Use AutoHotkey or Espanso to map triggers to grave-accented characters:

::a`::à
::e`::è
::i`::ì
::o`::ò
::u`::ù

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iPhone and iPad

Method 1: Long Press the Vowel Key

Tap and hold any vowel key on the iOS keyboard. A popup appears showing accent variants — the grave version (à, è, ì, ò, ù) is among them. Slide to it and release.

This is the built-in iOS method and requires no setup. Works for all vowels with grave accents immediately.

Method 2: Long Press the Backtick

For a standalone grave accent or backtick, it may not appear directly on the standard keyboard. Look in the symbols pages or set up a text replacement if you need it frequently.

Method 3: Text Replacement

Go to Settings → General → Keyboard → Text Replacement and map triggers for characters you use often.

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Android

Method 1: Long Press the Vowel Key

On Gboard and most Android keyboards, tap and hold any vowel key and accented variants including grave appear in the popup.

Method 2: Long Press for Backtick

On Gboard, the backtick may be accessible through long pressing the apostrophe key or through the symbols keyboard. Tap ?123 and look through the available symbol pages.

Method 3: Gboard Symbol Search

In Gboard, tap the G logo and search “grave” to find the standalone grave accent or specific accented letters.

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Chromebook

Method 1: Unicode Input for Accented Letters

Press Ctrl + Shift + U, type the hex code, then press Enter or Space:

Character	Hex Code
à	00e0
è	00e8
ì	00ec
ò	00f2
ù	00f9

Method 2: The Backtick Key

The backtick/grave key is in the same position as on standard keyboards — top left, to the left of the 1 key. On Chromebooks the key layout is slightly different but the backtick is accessible through the same key or the equivalent position.

Method 3: Add International Input Method

Go to Settings → Device → Keyboard → Input Methods and add a language keyboard or the international input method for dead key access.

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Linux

Method 1: Unicode Input

Press Ctrl + Shift + U, type the hex code (same as Chromebook above), then press Enter.

Method 2: Compose Key

With a Compose key configured:

• Compose + ` + a → à
• Compose + ` + e → è
• Compose + ` + i → ì
• Compose + ` + o → ò
• Compose + ` + u → ù

For uppercase, use the uppercase vowel in the sequence.

Method 3: The Backtick Key

Same position as standard keyboards — the backtick key produces ` directly.

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Microsoft Word (Any Platform)

Method 1: Built-In Shortcut

Word has a dedicated shortcut for grave-accented letters:

Press Ctrl + ` (Ctrl and the backtick key), then press the vowel:

• Ctrl + `, then a → à
• Ctrl + `, then e → è
• Ctrl + `, then i → ì
• Ctrl + `, then o → ò
• Ctrl + `, then u → ù

For uppercase, use Ctrl + ` then Shift + vowel.

This works on both Windows and Mac versions of Word and doesn’t depend on your keyboard layout — it’s built into Word itself.

Method 2: Alt + X

Type the Unicode code point then immediately press Alt + X:

• 00E0 then Alt + X → à
• 00E8 then Alt + X → è

Method 3: AutoCorrect

Go to Insert → Symbol → More Symbols, find the character, and set up AutoCorrect triggers.

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Google Docs

Option + ` then vowel on Mac works in Google Docs exactly as elsewhere. Alt codes work on Windows inside Docs.

Go to Insert → Special Characters and search “grave” for the combining character or specific accented letters.

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HTML

html

<!-- Precomposed grave-accented vowels -->
&agrave;    <!-- à lowercase -->
&Agrave;    <!-- À uppercase -->
&egrave;    <!-- è lowercase -->
&Egrave;    <!-- È uppercase -->
&igrave;    <!-- ì lowercase -->
&Igrave;    <!-- Ì uppercase -->
&ograve;    <!-- ò lowercase -->
&Ograve;    <!-- Ò uppercase -->
&ugrave;    <!-- ù lowercase -->
&Ugrave;    <!-- Ù uppercase -->

<!-- Direct characters work fine in UTF-8 documents -->
à è ì ò ù

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LaTeX

latex

% Grave accent in text mode
\`a     % à
\`e     % è
\`i     % ì
\`o     % ò
\`u     % ù

% Uppercase
\`A     % À
\`E     % È

% With inputenc — type characters directly
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
% Then type à, è directly in source

% Standalone grave accent in text
\`{}    % produces ` in output

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Programming Uses of the Backtick

The standalone backtick has significant uses in programming — worth noting since it’s the same key as the grave accent:

Markdown: Wrap code in single backticks for inline code `like this` or triple backticks for code blocks.

JavaScript: Template literals use backticks — `Hello ${name}` for string interpolation.

Shell/Bash: Command substitution — `command` (though $(command) is more modern).

SQL: Some databases use backticks to quote identifiers — `table_name` in MySQL.

Go: Raw string literals use backticks.

In all these cases you need the standalone backtick character from the keyboard key directly — not a combining grave accent.

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Quick Reference — Grave-Accented Vowels

Character	Mac	Windows (Alt)	Word	HTML
à	Option + `, a	Alt + 0224	Ctrl + `, a	à
è	Option + `, e	Alt + 0232	Ctrl + `, e	è
ì	Option + `, i	Alt + 0236	Ctrl + `, i	ì
ò	Option + `, o	Alt + 0242	Ctrl + `, o	ò
ù	Option + `, u	Alt + 0249	Ctrl + `, u	ù

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The Bottom Line

For the standalone backtick — already on your keyboard, top left, no method required. For grave-accented letters in documents, Option + then vowel on Mac and Ctrl + then vowel in Word are the cleanest shortcuts. On Windows, the US International keyboard turns the backtick key into a dead key that produces accented letters naturally — the most seamless solution for regular use.

On mobile, long pressing any vowel gives you the grave version immediately without any setup on either iPhone or Android.

The backtick key is already there — what most people actually need is the dead key behavior that turns it into an accent applier. US International on Windows and Option + ` on Mac both do exactly that.