Accent mark

Written Spanish uses acute accent marks very precisely, to show where the stress falls whenever it does not follow the default patterns; this practice is part of the highly phonemic nature of Spanish orthography.

The name of the French painter Paul Cézanne is written with an acute accent mark.

The Italian word è (which means "is") is written with a grave accent mark.

Student: Why does the word Čech have an accent mark on it? Teacher: That mark is called a háček or caron. It tells the reader that the letter sounds like [ch] as in "church", not like [k] as in "carrot" or [s] as in "celery".