Accents

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Accents

The rules differ somewhat depending whether you are in text mode, math mode, or the tabbing environment

Text mode

The following accents may be placed on letters. Although "o" is used in most of the example, the accents may be placed on any letter. Accents may even be placed above a "missing" letter; for example, \~{} produces a tilde over a blank space.

The following commands may be used only in paragraph or LR mode.

\`{o} produces a grave accent, ò
\'{o} produces an acute accent, ó
\^{o} produces a circumflex, ô
\"{o} produces an umlaut or dieresis, ö
\H{o} produces a long Hungarian umlaut
\~{o} produces a tilde, õ
\c{c} produces a cedilla, ç
\={o} produces a macron accent (a bar over the letter)
\b{o} produces a bar under the letter
\.{o} produces a dot over the letter
\d{o} produces a dot under the letter
\u{o} produces a breve over the letter
\v{o} produces a "v" over the letter
\t{oo} produces a "tie" (inverted u) over the two letters

Note that the letters "i" and "j" require special treatment when they are given accents because it is often desirable to replace the dot with the accent. For this purpose, the commands \i and \j can be used to produce dotless letters.

For example,

\^{\i} should be used for i, circumflex, î
\"{\i} should be used for i, umlaut, ï

Math mode

Several of the above and some similar accents can also be produced in math mode. The following commands may be used only in math mode.

\hat{o} is similar to the circumflex (cf. \^)
\widehat{oo} is a wide version of \hat over several letters
\check{o} is a vee or check (cf. \v)
\tilde{o} is a tilde (cf. \~)
\widetilde{oo} is a wide version of \tilde over several letters
\acute{o} is an acute accent (cf. \`)
\grave{o} is a grave accent (cf. \')
\dot{o} is a dot over the letter (cf. \.)
\ddot{o} is a double dot over the letter
\breve{o} is a breve (cf. \u)
\bar{o} is a macron (cf. \=)
\vec{o} is a vector (arrow) over the letter

Tabbing environment

Some of the accent marks used in running text have other uses in the tabbing environment. In that case they can be created with the following command:

\a' for an acute accent
\a` for a grave accent
\a= for a macron accent