Diacritic

Types of diacritical marks

• acute accent
• armstrong[?]
• breve
• caron
• cedilla
• circumflex
• diaeresis or umlaut
• double acute accent
• grave accent
• hacek
• macron
• ogonek
• spiritus asper
• spiritus lenis[?]

Marks that are sometimes diacritics, but also have other uses, are:

• bar (through the basic letter)
• comma
• tilde

Grave, acute, circumflex, cedilla and diaeresis are used in French. However, not all diacritics occur on all vowels in French:

• Grave only occurs on e (è)
• Acute occurs on e (é), a (á), and u (ú)
• Circumflex occurs on all vowels: e (ê), a (â), i (î), o (ô), and u (û)
• Diaeresis occurs on e (ë), and i (ï)

Umlaut is used in German on a (Ä/ä), o (Ö/ö), and u (Ü/ü).

Diaeresis is used in Dutch. For example in "ruïne" it means that the u and i are separately pronounced in their usual way, and not in the way that the combination ui is normally pronounced. Thus it works as a separation sign and not as an indication for an alternative version of the i.

Among the Scandinavian languages, Danish and Norwegian use ash ( æ ), o-slash ( ø ) and a-ring or a-armstrong ( å ). Swedish uses a-umlaut ( ä ) and o-umlaut ( ö ) in the place of ash and o-slash, but also uses a-circle ( å ).

Acute, diaeresis and tilde are used in Spanish.

Acute, cedilla, diaeresis and tilde are used in Portuguese.

Grave, acute, cedilla and diaeresis are used in Catalan.

Acute, diaeresis, and double acute accent are used in Hungarian.

Caron is used in many Slavic and the three Baltic languages to signify either palatalisation[?] or iotation[?].

Breve and circumflex are used in Esperanto

Umlaut, used only on u (ü), in Chinese Romanizations.

Different languages use different rules to put diacritic characters in alphabetical order. French treats letters with diacritical marks the same as the underlying letter for purposes of ordering and dictionaries. The Scandinavian languages, by contrast, treat the diacritics as new and separate letters of the alphabet, and sort them after z. Other languages treat diacritically marked letters as variants of the underlying letter, but alphabetize them following the unmarked letter.

Non-pure abjads (such as Hebrew and Arabic script) and abugidas use diacritics for denoting vowels (not in the list above). Arabic also uses diacritical marks to distinguish between different consonants, e.g. ب = b, and ت = t.

See also: Alphabet

On Macintosh computers, there are keyboard shortcuts for the most common diacritics:

• option-e followed by a vowel: places an acute accent.
• option-u followed by a vowel: places a diaeresis.
• option-n followed by a vowel or n: places a tilde.
• option-` followed by a vowel: places a grave accent.
• option-i followed by a vowel: places a circumflex.
• option-c: places a c cedilla

For Unicode listing for Windows, see below:

(ASCII keyboard letter followed by their Alt+ number)

(The following list contains both letters with diacritics and other special characters[?]. Perhaps non-diacritic special characters should be moved to a new page.)

‚ Single Low-9 Quotation Mark 0130

ƒ Small Letter f with Hook 0131

„ Double Low-9 Quotation Mark 0132

… Horizontal Ellipsis 0133

† Dagger 0134

‡ Double Dagger 0135

‰ Per Mille Sign 0137

Š Capital S with caron 0138

‹ Single left-pointing angle quotation mark 0139

ΠCapital Ligature Oe 0140

Ž Capital Z with caron 0142

‘ Left single quotation mark 0145

’ Right single quotation mark 0146

“ Left double quotation mark 0147

” Right double quotation mark 0148

• Bullet 0149

– En dash 0150

— Em dash 0151

˜ Small Tilde 0152

™ Trademark Sign 0153

š Small s with caron 0154

› Single right-pointing angle quotation mark 0155

œ Small ligature oe 0156

ž Small z with caron 0158

Ÿ Capital Y with Diaeresis 0159

¡ Inverted Exclamation Mark 0161

¢ Cent sign 0162

£ Pound sign 0163

¤ Currency Sign 0164

¥ Yen sign 0165

¦ Broken Bar 0166

§ Section Sign 0167

¨ Diaeresis 0168

© Copyright Sign 0169

ª Feminine Ordinal Indicator 0170

« Left-pointing double angle quotation mark 0171

¬ Not sign 0172

- Soft Hyphen 0173

® Registered Sign 0174

¯ Macron 0175

° Degree Sign 0176

± Plus-Minus Sign 0177

² Superscript Two 0178

³ Superscript Three 0179

´ Acute accent 0180

µ Micro sign 0181

¶ Pilcrow sign 0182

· Middle dot 0183

¸ Cedilla 0184

¹ Superscript One 0185

º Masculine ordinal indicator 0186

» Right-pointing double angle quotation mark 0187

¼ Fraction 1/4 0188

½ Fraction 1/2 0189

¾ Fraction 3/4 0190

¿ Inverted question mark 0191

À Capital A with grave 0192

Á Capital A with acute 0193

 Capital A with circumflex 0194

à Capital A with tilde 0195

Ä Capital A with Diaeresis 0196

Å Capital A with ring above 0197

Æ Capital Letter AE 0198

Ç Capital C with Cedilla 0199

È Capital E with grave 0200

É Capital E with acute 0201

Ê Capital E with circumflex 0202

Ë Capital E with diaeresis 0203

Ì Capital I with grave 0204

Í Capital I with acute 0205

Î Capital I with circumflex 0206

Ï Capital I with diaeresis 0207

Ð Capital Eth 0208

Ñ Capital N with tilde 0209

Ò Capital O with grave 0210

Ó Capital O with acute 0211

Ô Capital O with circumflex 0212

Õ Capital O with tilde 0213

Ö Capital O with diaeresis 0214

× Muliplication Sign 0215

Ø Capital O with slash 0216

Ù Capital U with grave 0217

Ú Capital U with acute 0218

Û Capital U with circumflex 0219

Ü Capital U with diaeresis 0220

Ý Capital Y with acute 0221

Þ Capital Thorn 0222

ß Small sharp s 0223

à Small a with grave 0224

á Small a with acute 0225

â Small a with circumflex 0226

ã Small a with tilde 0227

ä Small a with diaeresis 0228

å Small a with ring above 0229

æ Small letter ae 0230

ç Small c with cedilla 0231

è Small e with grave 0232

é Small e with acute 0233

ê Small e with circumflex 0234

ë Small e with diaeresis 0235

ì Small i with grave 0236

í Small i with acute 0237

î Small i with circumflex 0238

ï Small i with diaeresis 0239

ð Small letter eth 0240

ñ Small n with tilde 0241

ò Small o with grave 0242

ó Small o with acute 0243

ô Small o with circumflex 0244

õ Small o with tilde 0245

ö Small o with diaeresis 0246

÷ Division sign 0247

ø Small o with slash 0248

ù Small u with grave 0249

ú Small u with acute 0250

û Small u with circumflex 0251

ü Small u with diaeresis 0252

ý Small y with acute 0253

þ Small letter thorn 0254

ÿ Small y with diaeresis 0255