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English

I notice that native Spanish speakers often leave off accents in writing. Outside the context of edited material, it almost seems like accent pedantry is the sign of someone who has learned Spanish as a second language or has their spell-checker properly configured.

Do native Spanish speakers appreciate properly-placed accents in writing or does it not matter much? (Which is to say, should I spend my time looking up accents or am I wasting my time?)

Español

Me doy cuenta de que los hablantes nativos de español a menudo se dejan los acentos al escribir. Fuera del contexto de material editado, casi parece que la pedantería para poner acentos es el signo de uno que ha aprendido español como segundo idioma o tiene su corrector ortográfico configurado correctamente.

¿Aprecian los hablantes nativos de español los acentos correctamente colocados al escribir o no importa mucho? (Quiero decir, ¿debería emplear tiempo buscando acentos o estoy perdiendo el tiempo?

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    es kmo lo mas importante! xk sin los acentos, nadie puede entender lo k dices xk la escritura de los nativos siempre es correcta.
    – Flimzy
    Nov 15, 2011 at 22:50
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    Please take care, in spanish "acento" is a general word. All words have accent. But not all words have "acento diacrítico" or "tilde" that is the sign that you use for remark the accent.
    – Leandro Bardelli
    Jun 1, 2012 at 23:30
  • Nowadays tildes can be seen more often in informal chats thanks to the autocorrect function
    – Rol
    Dec 16, 2015 at 17:55
  • 2
    Aunque genera ciertas confusiones, no cuesta mucho comprender textos sin tildes. Tampoco que cambies g por j, o qu por k, etc. Ya ha habido una propuesta de reforma en ese sentido. El problema es que con ese enfoque «económico» comienzas por comerte las tildes y acabas escribiendo "Orrible kalamidad del kasteyano, jeneralmente, son las tildes o asentos. Esta sankadiya kotidiana desaparese kon la rreforma: aremos komo el ingles, ke a triunfado unibersalmente sin tildes". N.B.; léase el pdf enlazado en voz alta.
    – Fran
    Sep 28, 2018 at 19:59
  • Sarria, Sarría and Sarriá are three different places in Spain.
    – aerobiomat
    Feb 11, 2021 at 8:48

13 Answers 13

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Accents are important anywhere you want to use formal language, look professional, etc. Places where using "correct" Spanish is important. Writing an article for publication, a letter to a superior, in exams.

Despite what other people say in their answers, leaving out accents doesn't result in sore eyes, confused readers, hard to read text. If you're writing to somebody who you know likes everything proper you should expect this to irritate them. Generally people that don't like slang also won't like omitted accents.

I would compare it exactly to writing English in all lower case and omitting apostrophes.

Almost all of my friends from Spanish speaking countries never use accents when writing on the Internet, in emails, Facebook, instant messaging, SMS.

It's a matter of style. When you want to be formal, stick to the official orthography, with all the accents, punctuation, and capitalization used as the RAE advises. If you don't you will be interpreted as at least lazy and unprofessional, but perhaps worse.

If you are a young person chatting via keyboard to other young people, you don't have to be formal, just like in English. Your friends might even find it a bit stilted if you're too formal.

In fact in instant messaging and SMS I find my Spanish speaking friends go much further and use lots of special slang spellings I don't know at all - just like people do in English.

It's probably a good idea to be consistent though. It will be less pleasant for some people to read if you phase in and out of accent usage in a single piece of writing. In this case it will seem a lot more like spelling mistakes like mixing up "to" and "too" or "their" and "there" and "they're" in English. Context will show which word you mean but your wrong spellings will throw the reader off.

I do note however that when Spanish is written in all capitals that the accents will fairly often be omitted even in places where you might expect more formality and even though the RAE says the accents should always be used even in all capitals.

In short: You might make a faux pas if you leave them out, but you'll never make a faux pas if you put them in. Other than the cool kids sometimes thinking you're not cool (-;

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    Not using accents and proper punctuation make texts more difficult to read, because you have to keep trying to deduce what the writer meant. Not writing the accent in "camion" probably has no effect in the understandability of the text, but when the accent changes the meaning, omitting it makes you have to read twice or more to understand the meaning.
    – MikMik
    Dec 27, 2011 at 9:34
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    Diacritics are not grammar.
    – hippietrail
    Dec 31, 2011 at 19:05
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    @hippietrail: I get your point. But we shouldn't forget that the correctness of Spanish grammar and orthography is prescribed by a central authority, whereas English is not. Regarding "importance", that's fine, but importance for whom or what? Importance for being understood, for being correct, for keeping up the appearance, etc.? My point is that Spanish has an absolute concept of right vs. wrong, and it is important to be right rather than wrong.
    – CesarGon
    Apr 16, 2012 at 14:32
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    As an example of how they DO matter, consider the following sentence: "Espero que su teléfono no haya cambiado porque se que se cambio de casa." In this case the two occurrences of the word "se" have different meanings that cannot be seen without the accent, the first one is "I know" and the second one is a pronoun, the sentence means "I hope his phone number hasn't changed because I know he moved." The correct way of spelling it would be "Espero que su teléfono no haya cambiado porque sé que se cambio de casa."
    – Sergio Romero
    May 2, 2012 at 14:48
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    I think everyone should consider that technology wasn't developed with Spanish in mind. This has two implications. The first is that when sms texting became popular, accented letter were more expensive and sometimes made the text arrive cropped, so it became not only a custom but a rule to avoid them. On the other hand, you had to put an apostrophe above a letter to get accented letters in old typing machines, and this didn't work on capitals. I think that's why there is the thought that accents can be omitted in this case. That was the custom even in formal documents
    – Emilio
    Mar 15, 2018 at 19:09
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In my opinion, the accents are very important to ease the readability of your text. Since Spanish is an inflectional language, we make from a single root many words (e.g. verbal conjugation) whose only difference is the syllable having the stress:

El camino → (the road)
Él caminó → (he walked)
Yo camino → (I walk)

Also, another example being we have the diacritic accent (éste vs este):

Toda la culpa la tiene éste.
Toda la culpa la tiene este hombre.

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    The Real Academia Española recognizes that there are occasions when accents may be omitted. See my answer for more information. (Although I do agree that they are important.)
    – Richard
    Nov 15, 2011 at 23:31
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    Another example is: el ejército (the army), yo ejercito (I exercise), él ejercitó (he exercised).
    – dusan
    Nov 16, 2011 at 0:14
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    Yeah but with context you know exactly what the person is saying.
    – Timothy Martens
    Jan 10, 2012 at 18:44
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    @SergioRomero: I don't understand then why you don't consider it's important to also write English properly in comments to this question. For instance, every properly written sentence in English must include a verb. Or maybe it's just a case that when asked some people feel writing properly is important, but in practice often write casually rather than properly.
    – hippietrail
    May 2, 2012 at 15:40
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    @hippietrail: You've just proven my point. As English is my second language I'm sure I make grammar mistakes often, but at the very least I always make sure that every single word is spelled properly. Accents in Spanish are a matter of spelling.
    – Sergio Romero
    May 2, 2012 at 15:45
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You should absolutely use them - it's not a matter of pedantry. Otherwise you'll be forcing people to correct intonation in their minds - making any lengthy enough text a headache.

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    how important are capital letters and punctuation marks in english. although im pretty sure everybody understand me its a headache dont you agree
    – Ra_
    Jan 12, 2017 at 11:14
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Accents are essential when there is a possibility of confusion.

The Real Academia Española recognizes that there are occasions when accents may be omitted. The words éste or aquél, for example, don't require an accent when there is no risk of confusing the word with the adjective.

By comparison, o should have an accent when it comes between numerals, in order to help distinguish it from the number zero: 5 ó 6. (Note: this "rule" very recently changed so that o does not require the accent.)

My general rule: they are often not required, but always a good idea.

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    ¡Hola, Richard! It's good to see a familiar face. Did you mean to leave off the accents in the two examples you gave? It sounds like contradictory advice. (And s/consfusing/confusing/. ;-)
    – Jon 'links in bio' Ericson
    Nov 15, 2011 at 23:52
  • @JonEricson Hey! Yeah, the way it was written made it sound like those were examples. Thanks for pointing that out. I've updated it to make more sense. ;)
    – Richard
    Nov 16, 2011 at 12:19
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    The thing is the accent can be omitted only on SOME words. But most accented words REQUIRE it to distinguish themselves from other words. For instance with past tense and present tense or with homonyms. :-)
    – Jose Luis
    Nov 16, 2011 at 12:24
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    There's an error in your answer: since the last edition of the Ortografía de la Lengua Española, the letter "o" doesn't have an accent when it comes between numerals: Supresión de la tilde diacrítica en la conjunción disyuntiva o escrita entre cifras
    – Gonzalo Medina
    Nov 20, 2011 at 0:48
  • @GonzaloMedina Nice find! I've updated my answer to note that new, and very recent change
    – Richard
    Nov 21, 2011 at 13:40
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You definitely should. An accent can really make a difference when trying to understand a text. We, native speakers, can usually fully understand something without any accent, but it's much easier to read with them.

Also, to write spanish as the RAE says, you have to use them.

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Imagine you are writing about this situation:

There are some guys hitting another one, while others are looking at it. You see it from far away and shout:

¡Animales!

Meaning "beasts", for doing what they are doing.

Imagine you add an accent to the word and write:

¡Anímales!

Meaning "encourage them"!

The exact same little word will mean something completely different just because of an accent.

We could think on many other examples with fábrica / fabrica (fabricar), máquina / maquina (maquinar), etc.

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    Although, to be fair, if you're giving the command to vos intead of tú, it'd still be ¡Animales! (animá + les = animáles, and being llana ending in -s doesn't take an accent even though the base verb had it— this was a chance in the 2010 orthography)
    – user0721090601
    Oct 10, 2015 at 3:16
  • @guifa fair enough. Then we should restrict my example to places where we use tú and not vos.
    – fedorqui
    Oct 10, 2015 at 9:40
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Although it is possible to understand a text without accents, it would hurt your eyes.

In addition to this, some words change their meaning if you miss one accent (más/mas, él/el, té/te...).

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  • Or "arteria/artería"
    – user14029
    Nov 19, 2016 at 13:48
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To a true Mexican, a properly placed accent shows respect for the purity of the written language as the accent is most often used in proper names and I am sure that you yourself would not much appreciate a mispronunciation of your name. For example, the letter "i" in my name is not dotted, it carries an accent over the i and I always make use of the accent when using my signature. In English, a 3 syllable word usually carries the accent over the first syllable, but in Mexican Spanish, the accent is usually over the 2nd syllable in a 3 syllable name and over the 1st in a 2 syllable name. So YES, it is a way of showing respect for one's heritage and is extremely important for a purist of the correct pronunciation of one's name.

My name in the spelling and culture of Mexico is García. Here on the Tex/Mex border we are proud of our heritage and continue to speak Mexican Spanish fluently on a daily basis throughout the Rio Grande Valley.

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  • What is your name, if you don't mind sharing that personal detail? Since you're using it as an example, and all... :)
    – Flimzy
    Nov 16, 2011 at 6:16
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    I agree with Roman, in México, there are surnames with accent like: González, Pérez, Martínez, Jiménez, Gómez, Vázquez, Hernández, García. And while sometimes skipping the accent will be acceptable, using it will always be considered polite.
    – Omar Salinas
    Nov 23, 2011 at 18:37
  • I think it's important that if you're including some accents you should include all accents. Leaving some out willy-nilly seems worse to me than leaving them all out. For instance if you wrote most accents but left out those in some peoples' names that would indeed look rude to me.
    – hippietrail
    May 2, 2012 at 15:43
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Yes. A lot of people appreciate it. Sometimes, if writing a quick message or SMS they are left off. There is not accent pedantry, most times they are useful and help the reader to go through your text faster.

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As a native speaker, I would say you should try to write them everywhere, unless you are in a particular situation when writing with perfect orthography is difficult or impossible (e.g., writing an urgent SMS). In general, many Spanish native speakers find it annoying to read Spanish texts without correct accent marks.

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  • :) I am far for being an authority, but questions about human language are often subtle, and cannot be answered as a math question. As a native, (granted, not in every case) often you just know the answer because you and the people in your environment have dealt with that kind of situations most of your life. In this concrete question, I know that many native spanish speakers feel annoyed when reading something without accents. But I partially agree with you, maybe this answer was too informal, though probably not incorrect. Cheers !
    – Sergio
    May 31, 2012 at 20:12
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Definamos una "isografía" (1) como dos palabras o grupo de palabras o parte de palabras que se escriben igual, salvo por algún acento, pero cuyo significado es distinto y a veces incluso opuesto.

Aunque el español es una lengua muy viva y muy rica en palabras, lo cierto es que también nos faltan algunas. Aquí van unos ejemplos:

como = comme, en francés = like, en inglés

cómo = comment, en francés = how, en inglés

que = que, en francés = that, en inglés

qué = quel/quelle, qu´est-ce-que, en francés = what , en inglés

si = si, en francés = if, en inglés

sí = oui, en francés = yes , en inglés

se = on, en francés = we , en inglés

sé = je sais, en francés = i know, en inglés

Hay muchos más ejemplos y en todos los casos, tanto en el inglés, como en el francés existen en esas dos bellas lenguas dos palabras distintas pero una sola en español, distinguibles sólo por llevar acento o no llevarlo.

(1): Puede ser un neologismo, pero no me importa. Hay que saber crear neologismos si estos son lógicos, fundamentados y a la vez equilibrados y que no desentonen.

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It's not thaaaat important, people would still understand what you're trying to write if you miss some accents.

However, if you miss one, it will look like a stain in the paper.

Of course there are some words that DO NEED the accent because it changes the complete meaning of the word.. like "mas" and "más" or "él" and "el"

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  • Or tú and tu. :)
    – Alenanno
    Nov 15, 2011 at 23:00
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    I disagree. I think they are thaaaaaaaaat important. Reading a piece of text with no proper accents is a pain. You have to read the lines 2, sometimes 3 times, to make sense of what the person is trying to communicate.
    – Icarus
    Dec 20, 2011 at 20:13
  • It is very important
    – Krauss
    Jan 12, 2017 at 8:28
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It depends on the setting.

I agree with you that often, taking a lot of care with spelling and accents can make a foreigner stick out like a sore thumb. I for one have found myself in that situation. But I was already pretty noticeable to begin with; and writing with careful spelling and accents never brought any negative repercussions. If I had slummed and written more sloppily, it wouldn't have made any difference on my ability to integrate into the local community.

That said, there are settings where careful spelling and properly placed accents are important and much appreciated, and this site falls into that category.

I would recommend to all Spanish learners that they develop good spelling and accenting habits right from the start, and continue in this way. I would recommend that to any child or teenager who is a native speaker as well; but for someone learning Spanish as a second language, it's especially worthwhile, for several reasons:

  • Your writing will be better understood and more influential/more entertaining
  • It will help you understand and appreciate better the language, including relationships among words, meanings, grammar, etymology. In short, it will help you build your knowledge of the language and your respect for and attachment to the language and the people who speak it.
  • It will thus help you progress better in your learning.
  • It will help you pronounce Spanish correctly and beautifully, which will help you communicate succesfully, and connect with people better.
  • You will be showing respect for another group's language and culture.
  • It will speed some realizations that will help you understand English better, too.

That is not to say that if you forget some accents or place some in funny places, you'll be despised! I'm just saying that your spelling efforts will bring you extra respect (i.e. brownie points).

In short, I definitely don't see learning to place accents correctly as a waste of time.

Update 10/2/19: It may be easier to learn to write accents correctly if you install a Spanish spellchecker in your word processor and your browser.

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