The short open-mid vowels also vary depending on their environment.

The hard sign ъ is assigned to the open-mid vowel.

The grave accent may be used on e and o when they represent open-mid vowels.

The open-mid vowels identified by the International Phonetic Alphabet are:

Close-mid vowels and open-mid vowels ( and ) contrast only when they are stressed.

Lakota and are said to be more Open-mid vowel than the corresponding cardinal vowels, perhaps closer to and .

Distinguishing the open-mid vowels (é, ó) is very important because they can change completely the meaning of a word, like in the following examples:

That is, open-mid vowels, near-open vowels, and open vowels can all be considered low vowels.

Unlike é , a stressed final o is always a back open-mid vowel (andrò), making ó unnecessary outside of dictionaries.

There is evidence that open-mid vowel and were originally separate phonemes from close-mid vowel and , but by the twentieth century the pairs merged.

The defining characteristic of an open-mid vowel is that the tongue is positioned two-thirds of the way from an open vowel to a mid vowel.

In Doric Greek, even late lengthening of short mid vowels produced long open-mid vowels, suggesting that the short vowels were also open-mid in this dialect.

The Kensiu language spoken in Malaysia and Thailand is highly unusual in that it contrasts true-mid with close-mid and open-mid vowels without differences in other parameters such as backness or roundness.

The IPA divides the vowel space into thirds, with the close-mid vowels such as or and the open-mid vowels such as or equidistant in formant space between open and close or .

Many languages, such as Spanish language, Japanese language, Korean language, Greek language and Turkish language, have a 'mid front unrounded vowel' that is clearly distinct to speakers from both the close-mid and open-mid vowels.

For many languages that have only one phonemic front unrounded vowel in the mid-vowel area (i.e. neither close nor open), this vowel is pronounced as a true mid vowel, phonetically distinct from either a close-mid or open-mid vowel.