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Diacritic

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Latin letter A with multiple diacritics

A diacritic (also diacritical mark, diacritical point, diacritical sign, accent, or accent mark) is a glyph added to a letter or to a basic glyph. The term derives from the Ancient Greek διακριτικός (diakritikós, "distinguishing"), from διακρίνω (diakrínō, "to distinguish"). The word diacritic is a noun, though it is sometimes used in an attributive sense, whereas diacritical is only an adjective. Some diacritics, such as the acute ⟨ó⟩, grave ⟨ò⟩, and circumflex ⟨ô⟩ (all shown above an 'o'), are often called accents. Diacritics may appear above or below a letter or in some other position such as within the letter or between two letters.

The main use of diacritics in Latin script is to change the sound-values of the letters to which they are added. Historically, English has used the diaeresis diacritic to indicate the correct pronunciation of ambiguous words, such as "coöperate", without which the <oo> letter sequence could be misinterpreted to be pronounced /ˈkuːpəreɪt/. Other examples are the acute and grave accents, which can indicate that a vowel is to be pronounced differently from what is normal in that position, for example not reduced to /ə/ or silent as in the case of the two uses of the letter e in the noun résumé (as opposed to the verb resume) and the help sometimes provided in the pronunciation of some words such as doggèd, learnèd, blessèd, and especially words pronounced differently than normal in poetry (for example movèd, breathèd).

Most other words with diacritics in English are borrowings from languages such as French to better preserve the spelling, such as the diaeresis on naïve and Noël, the acute from café, the circumflex in the word crêpe, and the cedille in façade. All these diacritics, however, are frequently omitted in writing, and English is the only major modern European language that does not have diacritics in common usage.[a]

In Latin-script alphabets in other languages diacritics may distinguish between homonyms, such as the French là ("there") versus la ("the"), which are both pronounced /la/. In Gaelic type, a dot over a consonant indicates lenition of the consonant in question. In other writing systems, diacritics may perform other functions. Vowel pointing systems, namely the Arabic harakat and the Hebrew niqqud systems, indicate vowels that are not conveyed by the basic alphabet. The Indic virama ( ् etc.) and the Arabic sukūn ( ـْـ ) mark the absence of vowels. Cantillation marks indicate prosody. Other uses include the Early Cyrillic titlo stroke ( ◌҃ ) and the Hebrew gershayim ( ״ ), which, respectively, mark abbreviations or acronyms, and Greek diacritical marks, which showed that letters of the alphabet were being used as numerals. In Vietnamese and the Hanyu Pinyin official romanization system for Mandarin in China, diacritics are used to mark the tones of the syllables in which the marked vowels occur.

In orthography and collation, a letter modified by a diacritic may be treated either as a new, distinct letter or as a letter–diacritic combination. This varies from language to language and may vary from case to case within a language.

In some cases, letters are used as "in-line diacritics", with the same function as ancillary glyphs, in that they modify the sound of the letter preceding them, as in the case of the "h" in the English pronunciation of "sh" and "th".[2] Such letter combinations are sometimes even collated as a single distinct letter. For example, the spelling sch was traditionally often treated as a separate letter in German. Words with that spelling were listed after all other words spelled with s in card catalogs in the Vienna public libraries, for example (before digitization).

Types

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Among the types of diacritic used in alphabets based on the Latin script are:

The tilde, dot, comma, titlo, apostrophe, bar, and colon are sometimes diacritical marks, but also have other uses.

Not all diacritics occur adjacent to the letter they modify. In the Wali language of Ghana, for example, an apostrophe indicates a change of vowel quality, but occurs at the beginning of the word, as in the dialects ’Bulengee and ’Dolimi. Because of vowel harmony, all vowels in a word are affected, so the scope of the diacritic is the entire word. In abugida scripts, like those used to write Hindi and Thai, diacritics indicate vowels, and may occur above, below, before, after, or around the consonant letter they modify.

The tittle (dot) on the letter ⟨i⟩ or the letter ⟨j⟩, of the Latin alphabet originated as a mark to clearly distinguish ⟨i⟩ from the minims (downstrokes) of adjacent letters. It first appeared in the 11th century in the sequence ii (as in Latin: ingeníí), then spread to every i that was adjacent to an m, n or u, and finally to all lowercase is. The ⟨j⟩, originally a variant of i, inherited the tittle. The shape of the tittle developed from initially resembling the modern acute accent to becoming a long flourish by the 15th century. With the advent of Roman type it was reduced to the round dot that is currently used.[3] In Turkish and nearby languages, the tittle is a genuine diacritic rather than just a clarifying mark: see U+0130 İ LATIN CAPITAL LETTER I WITH DOT ABOVE and U+0131 ı LATIN SMALL LETTER DOTLESS I.

Several languages of eastern Europe use diacritics on both consonants and vowels, whereas in western Europe digraphs are more often used to change consonant sounds. Most languages in Europe use diacritics on vowels, aside from English where there are typically none (with some exceptions).

Diacritics specific to non-Latin alphabets

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Arabic

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  • (ئ ؤ إ أ and stand alone ء) hamza: indicates a glottal stop.
  • (ــًــٍــٌـ) tanwīn (تنوين) symbols: Serve a grammatical role in Arabic. The sign ـً is most commonly written in combination with alif, e.g. ـًا.
  • (ــّـ) shadda: Gemination (doubling) of consonants.
  • (ٱ) waṣla: Comes most commonly at the beginning of a word. Indicates a type of hamza that is pronounced only when the letter is read at the beginning of the talk.
  • (آ) madda: A written replacement for a hamza that is followed by an alif, i.e. (ءا). Read as a glottal stop followed by a long /aː/, e.g. ءاداب، ءاية، قرءان، مرءاة are written out respectively as آداب، آية، قرآن، مرآة. This writing rule does not apply when the alif that follows a hamza is not a part of the stem of the word, e.g. نتوءات is not written out as نتوآت as the stem نتوء does not have an alif that follows its hamza.
  • (ــٰـ) superscript alif (also "short" or "dagger alif": A replacement for an original alif that is dropped in the writing out of some rare words, e.g. لاكن is not written out with the original alif found in the word pronunciation, instead it is written out as لٰكن.
  • ḥarakāt (In Arabic: حركات also called تشكيل tashkīl):
    • (ــَـ) fatḥa (a)
    • (ــِـ) kasra (i)
    • (ــُـ) ḍamma (u)
    • (ــْـ) sukūn (no vowel)
  • The ḥarakāt or vowel points serve two purposes:
    • They serve as a phonetic guide. They indicate the presence of short vowels (fatḥa, kasra, or ḍamma) or their absence (sukūn).
    • At the last letter of a word, the vowel point reflects the inflection case or conjugation mood.
      • For nouns, The ḍamma is for the nominative, fatḥa for the accusative, and kasra for the genitive.
      • For verbs, the ḍamma is for the imperfective, fatḥa for the perfective, and the sukūn is for verbs in the imperative or jussive moods.
  • Vowel points or tashkīl should not be confused with consonant points or iʿjam (إعجام) – one, two or three dots written above or below a consonant to distinguish between letters of the same or similar form.

Greek

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These diacritics are used in addition to the acute, grave, and circumflex accents and the diaeresis:

Hebrew

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Genesis 1:9 "And God said, Let the waters be collected".
Letters in black, niqqud in red, cantillation in blue

(Cantillation marks do not generally render correctly; refer to Hebrew cantillation#Names and shapes of the ta'amim for a complete table together with instructions for how to maximize the possibility of viewing them in a web browser.)

Korean

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Hangul, the Korean syllabary

The diacritics 〮 and 〯 , known as Bangjeom (방점; 傍點), were used to mark pitch accents in Hangul for Middle Korean. They were written to the left of a syllable in vertical writing and above a syllable in horizontal writing.

Sanskrit and Indic

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Devanagari scripts (from Brahmic family) compound letters, which are vowels combined with consonants, have diacritics. Here, क (k) is shown with vowel diacritics. That is: ा, ि, े, ु, ौ ़, ः, etc.

Syriac

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  • A dot above and a dot below a letter represent [a], transliterated as a or ă,
  • Two diagonally-placed dots above a letter represent [ɑ], transliterated as ā or â or å,
  • Two horizontally-placed dots below a letter represent [ɛ], transliterated as e or ĕ; often pronounced [ɪ] and transliterated as i in the East Syriac dialect,
  • Two diagonally-placed dots below a letter represent [e], transliterated as ē,
  • A dot underneath the Beth represent a soft [v] sound, transliterated as v
  • A tilde (~) placed under Gamel represent a [dʒ] sound, transliterated as j
  • The letter Waw with a dot below it represents [u], transliterated as ū or u,
  • The letter Waw with a dot above it represents [o], transliterated as ō or o,
  • The letter Yōḏ with a dot beneath it represents [i], transliterated as ī or i,
  • A tilde (~) under Kaph represent a [t͡ʃ] sound, transliterated as ch or č,
  • A semicircle under Peh represents an [f] sound, transliterated as f or ph.

In addition to the above vowel marks, transliteration of Syriac sometimes includes ə, e̊ or superscript e (or often nothing at all) to represent an original Aramaic schwa that became lost later on at some point in the development of Syriac.[4] Some transliteration schemes find its inclusion necessary for showing spirantization or for historical reasons.[5][6]

Non-alphabetic scripts

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Some non-alphabetic scripts also employ symbols that function essentially as diacritics.

  • Non-pure abjads (such as Hebrew and Arabic script) and abugidas use diacritics for denoting vowels. Hebrew and Arabic also indicate consonant doubling and change with diacritics; Hebrew and Devanagari use them for foreign sounds. Devanagari and related abugidas also use a diacritical mark called a virama to mark the absence of a vowel. In addition, Devanagari uses the moon-dot chandrabindu ( ँ ) for vowel nasalization.
  • Unified Canadian Aboriginal Syllabics use several types of diacritics, including the diacritics with alphabetic properties known as Medials and Finals. Although long vowels originally were indicated with a negative line through the Syllabic glyphs, making the glyph appear broken, in the modern forms, a dot above is used to indicate vowel length. In some of the styles, a ring above indicates a long vowel with a [j] off-glide. Another diacritic, the "inner ring" is placed at the glyph's head to modify [p] to [f] and [t] to [θ]. Medials such as the "w-dot" placed next to the Syllabics glyph indicates a [w] being placed between the syllable onset consonant and the nucleus vowel. Finals indicate the syllable coda consonant; some of the syllable coda consonants in word medial positions, such as with the "h-tick", indicate the fortification of the consonant in the syllable following it.
  • The Japanese hiragana and katakana syllabaries use the dakuten (◌゛) and handakuten (◌゜) (in Japanese: 濁点 and 半濁点) symbols, also known as nigori (濁 "muddying") or ten-ten (点々 "dot dot") and maru (丸 "circle"), to indicate voiced consonants or other phonetic changes.
  • Emoticons are commonly created with diacritic symbols, especially Japanese emoticons on popular imageboards.

Alphabetization or collation

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Different languages use different rules to put diacritic characters in alphabetical order. For example, French and Portuguese treat letters with diacritical marks the same as the underlying letter for purposes of ordering and dictionaries. The Scandinavian languages and the Finnish language, by contrast, treat the characters with diacritics ⟨å⟩, ⟨ä⟩, and ⟨ö⟩ as distinct letters of the alphabet, and sort them after ⟨z⟩. Usually ⟨ä⟩ (a-umlaut) and ⟨ö⟩ (o-umlaut) [used in Swedish and Finnish] are sorted as equivalent to ⟨æ⟩ (ash) and ⟨ø⟩ (o-slash) [used in Danish and Norwegian]. Also, aa, when used as an alternative spelling to ⟨å⟩, is sorted as such. Other letters modified by diacritics are treated as variants of the underlying letter, with the exception that ⟨ü⟩ is frequently sorted as ⟨y⟩.

Languages that treat accented letters as variants of the underlying letter usually alphabetize words with such symbols immediately after similar unmarked words. For instance, in German where two words differ only by an umlaut, the word without it is sorted first in German dictionaries (e.g. schon and then schön, or fallen and then fällen). However, when names are concerned (e.g. in phone books or in author catalogues in libraries), umlauts are often treated as combinations of the vowel with a suffixed ⟨e⟩; Austrian phone books now treat characters with umlauts as separate letters (immediately following the underlying vowel).

In Spanish, the grapheme ⟨ñ⟩ is considered a distinct letter, different from ⟨n⟩ and collated between ⟨n⟩ and ⟨o⟩, as it denotes a different sound from that of a plain ⟨n⟩. But the accented vowels ⟨á⟩, ⟨é⟩, ⟨í⟩, ⟨ó⟩, ⟨ú⟩ are not separated from the unaccented vowels ⟨a⟩, ⟨e⟩, ⟨i⟩, ⟨o⟩, ⟨u⟩, as the acute accent in Spanish only modifies stress within the word or denotes a distinction between homonyms, and does not modify the sound of a letter.

For a comprehensive list of the collating orders in various languages, see Collating sequence.

Generation with computers

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German keyboard with umlaut letters

Modern computer technology was developed mostly in countries that speak Western European languages (particularly English), and many early binary encodings were developed with a bias favoring English—a language written without diacritical marks. With computer memory and computer storage at premium, early character sets were limited to the Latin alphabet, the ten digits and a few punctuation marks and conventional symbols. The American Standard Code for Information Interchange (ASCII), first published in 1963, encoded just 95 printable characters. It included just four free-standing diacritics—acute, grave, circumflex and tilde—which were to be used by backspacing and overprinting the base letter. The ISO/IEC 646 standard (1967) defined national variations that replace some American graphemes with precomposed characters (such as ⟨é⟩, ⟨è⟩ and ⟨ë⟩), according to language—but remained limited to 95 printable characters.

Unicode was conceived to solve this problem by assigning every known character its own code; if this code is known, most modern computer systems provide a method to input it. For historical reasons, almost all the letter-with-accent combinations used in European languages were given unique code points and these are called precomposed characters. For other languages, it is usually necessary to use a combining character diacritic together with the desired base letter. As of 2026, some applications and web browsers still fail to render combining diacritics correctly in certain cases, such as with web fonts that lack precomposed glyphs.

Depending on the keyboard layout and keyboard mapping, it is more or less easy to enter letters with diacritics on computers and typewriters. Keyboards used in countries where letters with diacritics are the norm, have keys engraved with the relevant symbols. In other cases, such as when the US international or UK extended mappings are used, the accented letter is created by first pressing the key with the diacritic mark, followed by the letter to place it on. This method is known as the dead key technique, as it produces no output of its own but modifies the output of the key pressed after it.

Languages with letters containing diacritics

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The following languages have letters with diacritics that are orthographically distinct from those without diacritics.

Latin script

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Baltic

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  • Latvian has the following letters: ⟨ā⟩, ⟨ē⟩, ⟨ī⟩, ⟨ū⟩, ⟨č⟩, ⟨ģ⟩, ⟨ķ⟩, ⟨ļ⟩, ⟨ņ⟩, ⟨š⟩, ⟨ž⟩
  • Lithuanian. In general usage, where letters appear with the caron (⟨č⟩, ⟨š⟩ and ⟨ž⟩), they are considered as separate letters from ⟨c⟩, ⟨s⟩ or ⟨z⟩ and collated separately; letters with the ogonek (⟨ą⟩, ⟨ę⟩, ⟨į⟩ and ⟨ų⟩), the macron (⟨ū⟩) and the overdot (⟨ė⟩) are considered as separate letters as well, but not given a unique collation order.

Celtic

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  • Welsh uses the circumflex, diaeresis, acute, and grave accents on its seven vowels ⟨a⟩, ⟨e⟩, ⟨i⟩, ⟨o⟩, ⟨u⟩, ⟨w⟩, ⟨y⟩ (hence the composites ⟨â⟩, ⟨ê⟩, ⟨î⟩, ⟨ô⟩, ⟨û⟩, ⟨ŵ⟩, ⟨ŷ⟩, ⟨ä⟩, ⟨ë⟩, ⟨ï⟩, ⟨ö⟩, ⟨ü⟩, ⟨ẅ⟩, ⟨ÿ⟩, ⟨á⟩, ⟨é⟩, ⟨í⟩, ⟨ó⟩, ⟨ú⟩, ⟨ẃ⟩, ⟨ý⟩, ⟨à⟩, ⟨è⟩, ⟨ì⟩, ⟨ò⟩, ⟨ù⟩, ⟨ẁ⟩, ⟨ỳ⟩). However all except the circumflex (which is used as a macron) are fairly rare.
  • Following spelling reforms since the 1970s, Scottish Gaelic uses graves only, which can be used on any vowel (⟨à⟩, ⟨è⟩, ⟨ì⟩, ⟨ò⟩, ⟨ù⟩). Formerly acute accents could be used on ⟨á⟩, ⟨ó⟩ and ⟨é⟩, which were used to indicate a specific vowel quality. With the elimination of these accents, the new orthography relies on the reader having prior knowledge of pronunciation of a given word.
  • Manx uses the cedilla diacritic ⟨ç⟩ combined with h to give the digraph ⟨çh⟩ (pronounced /tʃ/) to mark the distinction between it and the digraph ⟨ch⟩ (pronounced /h/ or /x/). Other diacritics used in Manx included the circumflex and diaeresis, as in ⟨â⟩, ⟨ê⟩, ⟨ï⟩, etc. to mark the distinction between two similarly spelled words but with slightly differing pronunciation.
  • Irish uses only acute accents to mark long vowels, following the 1948 spelling reform. Lenition is indicated using an overdot in Gaelic type (⟨ċ⟩,⟨ḋ⟩,⟨ḟ⟩, ⟨ġ⟩, ⟨ṁ⟩, ⟨ṗ⟩, ⟨ṡ⟩, ⟨ṫ⟩); in Roman type, a suffixed ⟨h⟩ is used. Thus, a ṁáṫair is equivalent to a mháthair.
  • Breton does not have a single orthography (spelling system), but uses diacritics for a number of purposes. The diaeresis is used to mark that two vowels are pronounced separately and not as a diphthong/digraph. The circumflex is used to mark long vowels, but usually only when the vowel length is not predictable by phonology. Nasalization of vowels may be marked with a tilde, or following the vowel with the letter ⟨ñ⟩. The plural suffix -où is used as a unified spelling to represent a suffix with a number of pronunciations in different dialects, and to distinguish this suffix from the digraph ⟨ou⟩ which is pronounced as /u:/. An apostrophe is used to distinguish ⟨c'h⟩, pronounced /x/ as the digraph ⟨ch⟩ is used in other Celtic languages, from the French-influenced digraph ch, pronounced /ʃ/.

Finno-Ugric

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  • Estonian has a distinct letter ⟨õ⟩, which contains a tilde. Estonian vowels with double-dot diacritics ⟨ä⟩, ⟨ö⟩, ⟨ü⟩ are similar to German, but these are also distinct letters, unlike German umlauted letters. All four have their own place in the alphabet, between ⟨w⟩ and ⟨x⟩. Carons in ⟨š⟩ or ⟨ž⟩ appear only in foreign proper names and loanwords. Also these are distinct letters, placed in the alphabet between s and t.
  • Finnish uses double-dotted vowels (⟨ä⟩ and ⟨ö⟩). As in Swedish and Estonian, these are regarded as individual letters, rather than 'vowel + diacritic' combinations (as happens in German). It also uses the characters ⟨å⟩, ⟨š⟩ and ⟨ž⟩ in foreign names and loanwords. In the Finnish and Swedish alphabets, ⟨å⟩, ⟨ä⟩ and ⟨ö⟩ collate as separate letters after ⟨z⟩, the others as variants of their base letter.
  • Hungarian uses the double-dot, the acute and double acute diacritics (the last is unique to Hungarian): (⟨ö⟩, ⟨ü⟩), (⟨á⟩, ⟨é⟩, ⟨í⟩, ⟨ó⟩, ⟨ú⟩) and (⟨ő⟩, ⟨ű⟩). The acute accent indicates the long form of a vowel (in case of ⟨i⟩/⟨í⟩, ⟨o⟩/⟨ó⟩, ⟨u⟩/⟨ú⟩) while the double acute performs the same function for ⟨ö⟩ and ⟨ü⟩. The acute accent can also indicate a different sound (more open, as in case of ⟨a⟩/⟨á⟩, ⟨e⟩/⟨é⟩). Both long and short forms of the vowels are listed separately in the Hungarian alphabet, but members of the pairs ⟨a⟩/⟨á⟩, ⟨e⟩/⟨é⟩, ⟨i⟩/⟨í⟩, ⟨o⟩/⟨ó⟩, ⟨ö⟩/⟨ő⟩, ⟨u⟩/⟨ú⟩ and ⟨ü⟩/⟨ű⟩ are collated in dictionaries as the same letter.
  • Karelian has the umlauted vowels ä, ö, but not ü as in Estonian or some orthographies of Veps, instead using y. It also has caron letters š and ž, and sometimes č (although it's replaced with tš in other orthographies).
  • Livonian has the following letters: ⟨ā⟩, ⟨ä⟩, ⟨ǟ⟩, ⟨ḑ⟩, ⟨ē⟩, ⟨ī⟩, ⟨ļ⟩, ⟨ņ⟩, ⟨ō⟩, ⟨ȯ⟩, ⟨ȱ⟩, ⟨õ⟩, ⟨ȭ⟩, ⟨ŗ⟩, ⟨š⟩, ⟨ț⟩, ⟨ū⟩, ⟨ž⟩.

Germanic

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  • German uses the two-dots diacritic (German: umlaut): letters ⟨ä⟩, ⟨ö⟩, ⟨ü⟩, used to indicate the fronting of back vowels (see umlaut (linguistics)).
  • Dutch uses acute, circumflex, grave and two-dots diacritics with most vowels and cedilla with c, as in French. This results in ⟨á⟩, ⟨à⟩, ⟨ä⟩, ⟨é⟩, ⟨è⟩, ⟨ê⟩, ⟨ë⟩, ⟨í⟩, ⟨î⟩, ⟨ï⟩, ⟨ó⟩, ⟨ô⟩, ⟨ö⟩, ⟨ú⟩, ⟨û⟩, ⟨ü⟩ and ⟨ç⟩. This is mostly on words (and names) originating from French (like crème, café, gêne, façade). The acute accent is also used to stress the vowel (like één). The two-dots diacritic is used as a linguistic diaeresis (a vowel hiatus) that splits the two vowels, e.g., reële, reünie, coördinatie), rather than to indicate a linguistic umlaut as used in German.
  • Afrikaans uses 16 additional vowel forms, both uppercase and lowercase: ⟨á⟩, ⟨ä⟩, ⟨é⟩, ⟨è⟩, ⟨ê⟩, ⟨ë⟩, ⟨í⟩, ⟨î⟩, ⟨ï⟩, ⟨ó⟩, ⟨ô⟩, ⟨ö⟩, ⟨ú⟩, ⟨û⟩, ⟨ü⟩, ⟨ý⟩.
  • Faroese uses acutes and some additional letters. All are considered separate letters and have their own place in the alphabet: ⟨á⟩, ⟨í⟩, ⟨ó⟩, ⟨ú⟩, ⟨ý⟩ and ⟨ø⟩.
  • Icelandic uses acutes and other additional letters. All are considered separate letters, and have their own place in the alphabet: ⟨á⟩, ⟨é⟩, ⟨í⟩, ⟨ó⟩, ⟨ú⟩, ⟨ý⟩ and ⟨ö⟩.
  • Danish and Norwegian use additional characters like the o-slash ⟨ø⟩ and the a-overring ⟨å⟩. These letters come after ⟨z⟩ and ⟨æ⟩ in the order ⟨ø⟩, ⟨å⟩. Historically, the ⟨å⟩ has developed from a ligature by writing a small superscript ⟨a⟩ over a lowercase ⟨a⟩; if an ⟨å⟩ character is unavailable, some Scandinavian languages allow the substitution of a doubled a, thus ⟨aa⟩. The Scandinavian languages collate these letters after ⟨z⟩, but have different national collation standards.
  • Swedish uses a-diaeresis (⟨ä⟩) and o-diaeresis (⟨ö⟩) in the place of ash (⟨æ⟩) and slashed o (⟨ø⟩) in addition to the a-overring (⟨å⟩). Historically, the two-dots diacritic for the Swedish letters ⟨ä⟩ and