The French accent is composed of two distinct accents, the ACUTE and the GRAVE. The ACUTE accent is represented by a symbol that looks like a forward slash (/) and is used to indicate a stressed syllable in a word. The GRAVE accent is represented by a symbol that looks like a backward slash () and is used to indicate a syllable that is not stressed. Both accents are used in the French language to differentiate between words that are otherwise spelled the same.