When do you put an accent on the word "como"?
I understand that you always put an accent on the word "como" or "por que" when it is used in a question, but there are times when those words aren't questions yet it still requires an accent. I am never sure when I should put an accent on words like "como" when it is used in a sentence that is not a question.
6 Answers
This may help Accents and basically accents are used as you mentioned on question words but also on exclamation words whereas the corresponding relative pronouns or connecting words don't carry them.
dear friend
as for "como", be aware that we have three word used the letter C O M O for three different meaning.
cómo (with acento on the second letter): it just means " how" like in "cómo estás = how are you.
como: (without acento): has two uses: 1- as a word meaning "as" "like" and 2- the first person cojugation of "comer" in present form, which means: " I eat".
as for the word QUE and por que:
qué = what? (question form) and admirantion usage ( like in: ¡qué bonito!¡ how beautiful it is!= (in both usages acento is needed). all kind of usage of this form of the word "qué" like "de qué" " a qué", has acento and.
que: (without acento) has one common usage, that is, relative pronoun, which means unquestional form of "what" which generally means "that". it has other combinational usages like "en que" "lo que" in which "que" has nonquestional meaning. you con refer to dictionaries for more information about this usages.
porqué: (with acento) means: "why?" "for what?".
porque: (without acento), means : "because...", "for the reason that..."
cómo te llamas? whats your name? Yo como una manzana. I eat an apple. Como agua para chocolate
Firstly, you need to understand that there are two (quite distinct) uses for accent marks (tildes). One (far and away the most common) use is to indicate the stressed syllable/vowel in a word. The other is what the Spanish term "tildes diacriticos". The latter are used to differentiate between words that are pronounced the same but have different grammatical functions (such as your "cómo" when used in direct [or indirect questions]) versus "como" when used to mean "like" (in comparisons) or "I eat".
In theory all of the diacritical accents could be eliminated without affecting the way people pronounce words (or, more precisely) without affecting the accuracy of Spanish orthography to reflect the pronunciation of Spanish. The long term policy of the RAE has been to eliminate the diacritic accents in all cases where reasonable context would permit making the distinction.
P.S. A brief comment on the relationship between written and spoken languages. The spoken language always comes first (and should take precedence). With respect to Spanish, we do not pronounce a word in a certain way because it is written with an accent. We write it with an accent because that reflects how we pronounce the word. For Spanish there are rarely problems but with a language like English, the difference is more obvious. We pronounce words in a certain way (subject to minor geographic variations) but we write them in ways that reflect centuries of changing pronunciations, The result being a system of writing that has little to do with the current pronunciation.
You use the accent in the interrogative forms or exclamative forms.
por ejemplo :
- ¿Cómo lo has hecho?
- ¿Cómo te llamas?
- ¡Cómo no!
¡Cómo pasan los años!
== How
But you don't in :
- Vive como un rey
- es tan alto como yo
- == like , ...as...as... (as tall as me) , comparison.
I hope this answers your question !
Hi, welcome to the forum! 
When you use:
cómo as how
por qué as why
qué as what
No entiendo cómo lo haces.
Pregúntale por qué le ha gritado a mi novio.
No sé qué quieres...
