Editing International Phonetic Alphabet (section)

== Symbol names ==
{{Main|Naming conventions of the International Phonetic Alphabet}}
In both print and speech, an IPA symbol is often distinguished from the sound it transcribes because IPA letters very often do not have their cardinal IPA values in practice. This is commonly the case in phonemic and broad phonetic transcription, making articulatory descriptions of IPA letters, such as "mid front rounded vowel" or "voiced velar stop", inappropriate as names for those letters. While the ''Handbook of the International Phonetic Association'' states that no official names exist for its symbols, it admits the presence of one or two common names for each.<ref>"...the International Phonetic Association has never officially approved a set of names..." {{harv|International Phonetic Association|1999|p=31}}</ref> The symbols also have [[Nonce word|nonce names]] in the [[Unicode]] standard. In many cases, the names in Unicode and the IPA ''Handbook'' differ. For example, the ''Handbook'' calls {{angbr IPA|ɛ}} "epsilon", while Unicode calls it "small letter open e".

The traditional names of the Latin and Greek letters are usually used for unmodified letters.{{NoteTag|For example, the IPA ''Handbook'' lists {{angbr IPA|p}} as "lower-case P" and {{angbr IPA|χ}} as "chi."<ref>{{harvnb|International Phonetic Association|1999|p=171}}</ref>}} Letters which are not directly derived from these alphabets, such as {{angbr IPA|ʕ}}, may have a variety of names, sometimes based on the appearance of the symbol or on the sound that it represents. In Unicode, some of the letters of Greek origin have Latin forms for use in IPA; the others use the characters from the Greek block.

For diacritics, there are two methods of naming. For traditional diacritics, the IPA notes the name in a well known language; for example, {{angbr IPA|é}} is "e-[[Acute accent|acute]]", based on the name of the diacritic in English and French. Non-traditional diacritics are often named after objects they resemble, so {{angbr IPA|d̪}} is called "d-bridge".

[[Geoffrey Pullum]] and {{ill|William Ladusaw|qid=Q127608481|s=1|v=sup}} list a variety of names in use for both current and retired IPA symbols in their ''[[Phonetic Symbol Guide]]''. Many of them found their way into Unicode.<ref name=Pullum />