In music notation, an accent is a type of articulation drawn as a short greater-than sign (>) above the staff over the affected note. It is interpreted as an emphasis of the note, making it stronger and heavier without making it very much louder (as a sforzando would).
On the staff, it looks something like this:
/\ >
---| /-----------------------------------------------------
|/
---/------------------*------------------------------------
/| |
-/-|/\---------------|-------------------------------------
| | | |
|--|--|--------------|-------------------------------------
\ | |
--\|_/-----------------------------------------------------
|
\|