Revised as of
9 Sept 2022
Diacritics are marks added to letters and are very handy to know about — especially if you’re including terms or phrases from a foreign language in an e-version of your story or report.
For one, it shows respect for the language — and prevents confusion arising as to what you mean . . .??
Okay, okay, yeah, it’s pretty rare you’ll be using these particular phrases in the table below, but it does demonstrate the confusion that could arise.
You may also want to explore the Word Confusion posts on
Attach vs Attaché vs Attachée, Chargé d’affaires vs Chargée d’affaires, Cher, Chéri versus Chère, Chérie, Confidant vs Confidante vs Confident, Fiancé versus Fiancée, and Protégé versus Protégée.
| poisson salé | salted fish |
| poisson sale | dirty fish |
| tâche quotidienne | daily task |
| tache quotidienne | daily stain |
| blessé et volé | wounded and robbed |
| blesse et vole | wounds and robs |
| maï éclaté non beurré mais caramelisé | caramel-coated, non-buttered popcorn |
| mais eclate non beurre mais caramelise | but explodes not butter but caramelizes |
Ensuring Upper- and Lowercase Diacritics are Possible
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head><meta charset=”UTF-8″></head>
The Universal Multiple-Octet Coded Character Set (ISO/IEC 10646; UCS) was adopted by the ISO as “the first standardized character set designed to cover all the languages in the world.
It is supported natively by the most recent operating systems (MS Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, etc.). It is also used on the Internet with the help of UTF-8 (eight-bit encoded Unicode Transformation Format). HTML 4 supports UTF-8. HTML 5 supports both UTF-8 (the default) and UTF-16!
If you’re using WordPress or Blogspot, they already incorporate it, so you needn’t worry about it.
Creating Symbols
The method of coding can also be used to create symbols, which can come in very handy: ¢ lets you have your 2¢, although with inflation, that’s probably gone up to 2€ (€) or even 293.19 ¥ (¥).
A symbol commonly used by writers is the copyright, or © to create a ©. Fractions can be amazingly handy as well, well at least ½ to ¾ of the time (½ and ¾). If you’re working up some non-fiction, particularly government regulations or legal references, you may find § handy (§).
Formatting Tips started . . .
. . . as my way of dealing with a professional frustration with words that should have been capitalized or italicized, in quotes or not, what should be spelled out and what can be abbreviated, proper styling for the Latin names of plants, the proper formatting and usage of titles and more in manuscripts I was editing as well as books I was reviewing. It evolved into a sharing of information with y’all. I’m hoping you’ll share with us words that have been a bête noire for you from either end. Consider sharing this style tip with friends by tweeting it.
| Diacritic | ||
| Definition: A mark or sign indicating a difference in pronunciation.
I’m not going to reproduce all the possibilities as there are plenty of websites out there that will provide the code you want; although, not every site that provides a table of codes will have every code, letter, symbol, etc., that you want. Some sites that I’ve found useful include ASCII-Code.com, About.com’s HTML Codes — HTML Special Characters, Penn State’s Unicode Entity Codes for Phonetic Diacritics, Alan Wood’s Greek and Coptic, and University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Extended Latin. Surprisingly, Wikipedia’s article on Diacritic is quite good, and their entry on Macrons is also useful. At worst, google for ascii code or character code to find more. A.k.a., diacritical marks, diacritical point, diacritical sign, basic glyph, glyph, accent, ascii code, character code |
||
| Other diacritical marks include breves, carons, Greek, hachek, diaereses, ligatures with an acute accent, over and under dots, triple under dots (!), ring, slashes with an acute accent, and those are just the simple ones! | ||
| Letter | Mark | Code |
|---|---|---|
| á é ó |
acute | á é ó +++ |
| Ş ş |
cedilla | Ş ş |
| î | circumflex | î |
| À | grave | À |
| ā ē ō |
macron | ā ē ō +++ |
| ø | slash | ø |
| ö | umlaut | ö |
| Ǽ œ |
ligature | Æ, or &508; œ |
| Make Your Own: | ||
| Each type of diacritic can be “forced” on a letter creating a “homemade” diacritic by typing the letter in front of a base code particular to that diacritic. | ||
| For a . . . | Mark | Base Code (letter + code) |
| b̌ | b with a caron | b̌ |
| V̄ c̄ |
V or c with a macron | V̄ c̄ |
| Some Fun &/or Useful Symbols | ||
| Symbol | Mark | Code |
| ⸮ | irony punctuation mark | ⸮ |
| ə | schwa phonetic symbol | ə |
| ☞ | right pointing index finger in white | ☞ |
| ¾ | three-fourths | ¾ |
| ∴ | therefore | ∴ |
| ß | eszett, or “sharp S” | ß |
| × | multiplication | × × |
| 😉 | winking face | 😉 |
C’mon, get it out of your system, bitch, whine, moan . . . which words are your pet peeves? Also, please note that I try to be as accurate as I can, but mistakes happen or I miss something. Email me if you find errors, so I can fix them . . . and we’ll all benefit!
Satisfy your curiosity about other Formatting Tips by exploring its homepage or more generally explore the index of self-editing posts. You may also want to explore Book Layout & Formatting Ideas, Formatting Tips, Grammar Explanations, Linguistics, Publishing Tips, the Properly Punctuated, Word Confusions, Writing Ideas and Resources, and Working Your Website.
Resources for Diacritics
Post Sources
Crystal, David. Spell It Out: The Curious, Enthralling, and Extraordinary Story of English Spelling. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2012. Print, 242-43
Mandjee, Azim et Philippe Brouste. “Cultural and Linguistic Characteristics of Québec”. chapt 11. Office québécois de la langue française. 2006. Web. 25 Mar 2016. <http://www.oqlf.gouv.qc.ca/english/infoguides/cultural_ling_char_of_Quebec_IT_20061122.pdf>.
“Questions de langue. Academie-française. 1990. Web. 25 Mar 2016. <http://www.academie-francaise.fr/questions-de-langue#5_strong-em-accentuation-des-majuscules-em-strong>.
Sources for Diacritics
Czech, Slovak, and Slovenian, <https://websitebuilders.com/tools/html-codes/czech/>.
Extended Latin, <http://webdesign.about.com/library/bl_htmlcodes.htm> and <http://www.ssec.wisc.edu/~tomw/java/unicode.html#x0180>.
Geometric shapes (in unicode), <https://www.unicode.org/charts/nameslist/n_25A0.html>.
Geometric shapes: Squares, <https://www.alt-codes.net/square-symbols>.
Graphemica has a good resource for obscure perhaps, but it’s all in unicode, <http://graphemica.com/ >.
Greek, <http://www.alanwood.net/unicode/greek.html>.
Math, <http://symbolcodes.tlt.psu.edu/bylanguage/mathchart.html>.
Penn State – Computing with Accents, Symbols, and Foreign Scripts, <http://symbolcodes.tlt.psu.edu/bylanguage/ipavowels.html>.
Smiley faces, <http://www.alt-codes.net/smiley_alt_codes.php>.
Symbols: Phonetic, <http://symbolcodes.tlt.psu.edu/bylanguage/ipachart.html#e ->.
Symbols: Tim Trott has a great selection of asterisks, hearts, cards, chess, musical shapes and symbols, <http://timtrott.co.uk/html-character-codes/#greek >.
W3.org has tons of esoteric character entities, <http://dev.w3.org/html5/html-author/charref>.
W3Schools.com, <https://www.w3schools.com/charsets/ref_utf_diacritical.asp>.
Wikipedia, <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diacritic >.
Pinterest Photo Credits:
Kathy had some fun putting diacritics in a jumble.
