The orthographic accent that marks the accentuation of words is called an accent.
Tilde is a term that can be used in masculine (the tilde) or feminine (the tilde). This is the sign used to indicate the accentuation of a word or to differentiate one letter from another.
We must know, in addition to the above, the etymological origin of said term and that leads us to establish that it derives from Latin. Specifically, it comes from the verb "titulare", which can be translated as "put a title."
The accent as a spelling accent
Typically, the term refers to the orthographic accent that, in our language , is placed on the vowels according to the stress rules. In this way, the vowels with an accent are as follows: "á" , "é" , "í" , "ó" and "ú" .
An accentuation rule indicates that all esdrújula words (stressed on the penultimate syllable) have an accent. That is why this sign must be included in terms such as "compass" , "hippodrome" and "perimeter" .
Serious words (stressed on the penultimate syllable) must have an accent when they do not end in a vowel , S or N : "tree" , "sugar" , "marble" . The accent, on the other hand, always appears in acute words (stressed on the last syllable) that end in a vowel , S or N : "song" , "you will play" , "sofa" . It is important to note that there are certain special circumstances that modify these rules.
By not including the accent when the spelling rules establish it, a mistake is committed.
Spelling mistakes
When the accent is not included in words that should have a spelling accent, a spelling mistake is committed. Therefore, if we write "compass" instead of "compass" , or "tree" instead of "tree" , we will be making errors.
Students are the ones who hate "tildes" the most because they have to learn the basic rules of accentuation to avoid making mistakes that their teachers take into account in exams. For this reason, they see the need to study a lot in that sense and also to practice because it is the way to prevent a good exam from being reduced to a low grade or even being failed because of the accents.
Other types of accents
It should be noted that the stroke that is placed on the letter Ñ and Ç is also called an accent. In these cases, the accent marks serve to differentiate between N and Ñ and between C and Ç .
In the same way, we cannot forget that the term accent is also used to refer to what the umlaut is, the diacritic type sign that has the appearance of two points and that is placed, in the case of Spanish, above the letter "u" when it should be pronounced in cases that form the syllables "gue" or "gui". Examples of this type of accent are those used in words such as "stork", "pedigüeña", "penguin" or "ambiguity", among many others.
Precisely the accent is one of the main differences that Spanish maintains with other languages such as, for example, English. And the fact is that in the Anglo-Saxon language the spelling accent, the tilde of the eñe and the cedilla or the umlaut are never used.