accent grave

plural accents grave

1. A grave accent.

   To display formulas in a spreadsheet, press Ctrl+` (an accent grave character, which appears on the same key as the ~ sign and often appears to the left of the number 1 key near the top of a keyboard).

   2010, Wallace Wang, “The Basics of Spreadsheets: Numbers, Labels, and Formulas”, in Office 2010 for Dummies, Hoboken, NJ: Wiley Publishing, →ISBN, page 156

   5 more examples

   The second method for shutting off the macro key is to type an accent grave (`). The key is usually located in the upper left corner of the keyboard. The accent grave symbol shares the key with the tilde symbol (~).

   1991, Douglas J. Wolf, Microsoft Works Quick Reference, Carmel, IN: Que Corporation, →ISBN, page 128

   In order to print an actual semicolon or the prefix marker (\) as part of a citation, type an accent grave (`) before the character. The accent grave tells EndNote to treat the following character as regular text, and not as a significant character for parsing the citation.

   2001, Endnote 5: Bibliographies Made Easy, Berkeley, CA: ISI ResearchSoft, Thomson Scientific, page 208

   If you occasionally have to type a foreign word with special punctuation such as Español with the tilde over the “n” or Frère with an accent grave, it can be exasperating to find the right program within word processing.

   2010, “Using Technology in the Library”, in Kate Vande Brake, editor, Tips and Other Bright Ideas for Secondary School Libraries, volume 4, Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, →ISBN, page 77

   California, like several other states, prohibits the use of diacritical marks or accents on official documents. That means no tilde (~), no accent grave (`), no umlaut (¨) and certainly no cedilla (¸).

   2015 April 11, Tovin Lapan, “California birth certificates and accents: O’Connor alright, Ramón and José is not”, in The Guardian, archived from the original on 04 Apr 2025

   Dorothy took a short breath. “Accent grave over the third e.” / Lucybelle laughed. She knew exactly what Dorothy was referring to. Anytime someone asked her name, the Vassar scholar said, “Geneviève, four e’s, accent grave over the third one.”

   2016, Lucy Jane Bledsoe, A Thin Bright Line, Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, →ISBN, page 182