The diacritical accent, also called diacritical tilde, is an indication that some words incorporate and that is used to distinguish them from others that are written exactly the same, but have a different meaning. Remember that in Spanish there are many words with the same spelling and pronunciation and that, at the same time, they have more than one meaning.
It is not the same to say “yes” as “yes”, since the first word is an affirmative adverb and the second a conjunction.
The diacritical accent of monosyllables
Monosyllable words have only one syllable. Some of them have more than one meaning and therefore have to be differentiated in some way. Three illustrative examples would be the following: "te" pronoun does not have an accent or diacritical accent and it does when it is a noun and refers to the infusion of tea, "el" does not have this accent when it is an article and "yes" does It is a pronoun and the word "more" does not go with an accent if it is a conjunction and it has it in the case of being an adverb.
The list of monosyllables with and without diacritical accent is extensive: you and you, me and my, give and de, know and se, etc.
The diacritical accent in the demonstratives
The demonstratives this, this, that, that, that and that do not have to have a diacritical accent in any case. It is considered that it is not necessary, since by the context of a sentence it is possible to distinguish its meaning without having to incorporate a tilde.
Observing the words that are used as interrogatives or exclamations
Words like what, how much, where, what or who have to be accentuated when they indicate some kind of question or exclamation. This rule can be seen in the following sentences: "tell me what you want", "how much do you need", "where are you going this morning" or "what do you want it for".
Other cases
The word "solo" does not have a diacritical accent in any case. This rule is relatively new, because until 2010 there were two options: if it was only an adjective, it did not have an accent, but it did if it was an adverb that meant only.
The word "yet" has an accent when it means yet (for example, "my friend hasn't come to the party yet"). On the contrary, it does not carry it if "even" is equivalent to also, even, not even or even ("even the losers won" could be replaced by "until the losers won" and for this reason it does not have an accent mark).
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