Editing Diacritic (section)

{{Short description|Modifier mark added to a letter}}
{{For|the academic journal|Diacritics (journal){{!}}''Diacritics'' (journal)}}
[[File:Latin letter Ą̄́.svg|thumb|Latin letter A with multiple diacritics]]
{{Contains special characters}}
{{Orthography notation}}
A '''diacritic''' (also '''diacritical mark''', '''diacritical point''', '''diacritical sign''', or '''accent''') is a [[glyph]] added to a [[letter (alphabet)|letter]] or to a basic glyph. The term derives from the [[Ancient Greek]] {{wikt-lang|grc|διακριτικός}} ({{lang|grc-Latn|diakritikós}}, "distinguishing"), from {{lang|grc|διακρίνω}} ({{lang|grc-Latn|diakrínō}}, "to distinguish"). The word ''diacritic'' is a [[noun]], though it is sometimes used in an [[Noun adjunct|attributive]] sense, whereas ''diacritical'' is only an [[adjective]]. Some diacritics, such as the [[acute accent|acute]] {{angbr|ó}}, [[grave accent|grave]] {{angbr|ò}}, and [[circumflex]] {{angbr|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)|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 {{IPA|/ˈkuːpəreɪt/}}. Other examples are the acute and grave accents, which can indicate that a vowel is to be pronounced differently than 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 [[loan word|borrowings]] from languages such as [[French language|French]] to better preserve the spelling, such as the diaeresis on {{lang|fr|naïve}} and {{lang|fr|Noël}}, the [[acute (diacritic)|acute]] from {{lang|fr|café}}, the [[circumflex]] in the word {{lang|fr|crêpe}}, and the [[cedille]] in {{lang|fr|façade}}. All these diacritics, however, are frequently omitted in writing, and English is the only major modern [[Languages of Europe|European language]] that does not have diacritics in common usage.{{efn|''[[The New Yorker]]'' is reported as being unique in its continuing usage of them.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://dscriber.com/news/121-the-new-yorkers-odd-mark-the-diaeresis |first1= Dan |last1=Baum |website=dscriber |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20101216160024/http://dscriber.com/news/121-the-new-yorkers-odd-mark-the-diaeresis|url-status=dead|archive-date=16 December 2010|title=The New Yorker's odd mark — the diaeresis|date=16 December 2010 |quote=Among the many mysteries of The New Yorker is that funny little umlaut over words like coöperate and reëlect. The New Yorker seems to be the only publication on the planet that uses it, and I always found it a little pretentious until I did some research. Turns out, it's not an umlaut. It's a diaeresis.}}</ref>}}

In [[Latin-script alphabet]]s in other languages diacritics may distinguish between [[homonym]]s, such as the [[French language|French]] {{lang|fr|là}} ("there") versus {{lang|fr|la}} ("the"), which are both pronounced {{IPA|/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 (disambiguation)|Vowel pointing]] systems, namely the [[Arabic language|Arabic]] [[Arabic diacritics|harakat]] and the [[Hebrew language|Hebrew]] [[niqqud]] systems, indicate vowels that are not conveyed by the basic alphabet. The [[Indic script|Indic]] [[virama]] (&thinsp;<big>्</big>&thinsp;etc.) and the Arabic [[sukūn]] (&thinsp;<big>{{lang|ar|ـْـ|rtl=yes}}</big>&thinsp;) mark the absence of vowels. [[Hebrew cantillation|Cantillation mark]]s indicate [[Prosody (linguistics)|prosody]]. Other uses include the [[Early Cyrillic]] [[titlo]] stroke (&thinsp;<big>◌҃</big>&thinsp;) and the Hebrew [[gershayim]] (&thinsp;<big>{{lang|he|״|rtl=yes}}</big>&thinsp;), which, respectively, mark [[abbreviation]]s or [[acronym]]s, and Greek diacritical marks, which showed that letters of the alphabet were being used as [[Greek numerals|numerals]]. In [[Vietnamese language|Vietnamese]] and the [[Pinyin|Hanyu Pinyin]] official romanization system for Mandarin in China, diacritics are used to mark the [[Standard Chinese phonology#Tones|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".<ref>{{cite book |first=Henry |last=Sweet |date=1877 |title=A Handbook of Phonetics |pages=174–175 |quote=Even letters with accents and diacritics [...] being only cast for a few founts, act practically as new letters. [...] We may consider the h in sh and th simply as a diacritic written for convenience on a line with the letter it modifies. |publisher=Cambridge University Press |location=Cambridge}}</ref> 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).