Italian ALT Codes

Italian accent rules are mostly about final-syllable stress. Italian words are stressed on the penultimate syllable by default. When stress falls on the last syllable, an accent mark is required. Caffè (stress on final è), città (stress on à), virtù (stress on ù), perché (stress on é). Without the accent, these words would be mispronounced or ambiguous.

Grave is the default accent. For a, i, o, u — always grave: à, ì, ò, ù. Never acute. So città (not cittá), virtù (not virtú).

e and o have two accents to indicate sound. The letter e can be open (è, like "eh") or closed (é, like "ay"). È (grave) = "eh" sound in caffè. É (acute) = "ay" sound in perché. Similarly for o: grave ò is open, acute ó is closed. However, acute on o is rare in practice — most Italian words use ò.

Accents distinguish homophones. Some words differ only by accent: e ("and") vs. è ("is"). da ("from") vs. dà ("gives"). si ("oneself") vs. sì ("yes"). la ("the") vs. là ("there"). ne ("of it") vs. né ("neither"). In these cases the accent carries grammatical weight.

Apostrophes aren't accents. You'll see Italian words like l'amore, d'accordo, c'è. These are apostrophes indicating elision (a dropped vowel), not accent marks. They use a regular apostrophe character and don't need ALT codes.