The tie is a symbol in the shape of an
arc similar to a large
breve, used in
Greek, phonetic alphabets, and
Z notation
The Z notation is a formal specification language used for describing and modelling computing systems. It is targeted at the clear specification of computer programs and computer-based systems in general.
History
In 1974, Jean-Raymond Abria ...
. It can be used between two characters with spacing as
punctuation
Punctuation (or sometimes interpunction) is the use of spacing, conventional signs (called punctuation marks), and certain typographical devices as aids to the understanding and correct reading of written text, whether read silently or aloud. A ...
, non-spacing as a
diacritic
A diacritic (also diacritical mark, diacritical point, diacritical sign, or accent) is a glyph added to a letter or to a basic glyph. The term derives from the Ancient Greek (, "distinguishing"), from (, "to distinguish"). The word ''diacrit ...
, or (underneath) as a
proofreading
Proofreading is the reading of a galley proof or an electronic copy of a publication to find and correct reproduction errors of text or art. Proofreading is the final step in the editorial cycle before publication.
Professional
Traditional ...
mark. It can be above or below, and reversed. Its forms are called tie, double breve, enotikon or papyrological hyphen, ligature tie, and undertie.
Uses
Cyrillic transliteration
In the
ALA-LC romanization for Russian, a tie symbol is placed over some combinations of roman letters that are represented by a single letter in the Cyrillic alphabet, e.g., T͡S for Ц and i͡a for я. This is not uniformly applied, however: some letters corresponding to common digraphs in English, such as sh for ш and kh for х do not employ the tie. In practice, the tie ligature is often omitted.
Greek
The enotikon (, ''henōtikón'',
"uniter", from "a serving to unite or unify"), papyrological hyphen, or Greek hyphen was a low tie mark found in late
Classical and
Byzantine
The Byzantine Empire, also referred to as the Eastern Roman Empire or Byzantium, was the continuation of the Roman Empire primarily in its eastern provinces during Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, when its capital city was Constantinopl ...
papyri
Papyrus ( ) is a material similar to thick paper that was used in ancient times as a writing surface. It was made from the pith of the papyrus plant, '' Cyperus papyrus'', a wetland sedge. ''Papyrus'' (plural: ''papyri'') can also refer to a ...
.
[Nicholas, Nick.]
Greek Unicode Issues: Greek /h/
. 2005. Accessed 7 Oct 2014. In an era when Greek texts were typically written ''
scripta continua
''Scriptio continua'' (Latin for "continuous script"), also known as ''scriptura continua'' or ''scripta continua'', is a style of writing without spaces or other marks between the words or sentences. The form also lacks punctuation, diacritic ...
'', the enotikon served to show that a series of letters should be read as a single word rather than misunderstood as two separate words. (Its companion mark was the
hypodiastole, which showed that a series of letters should be understood as two separate words.
[Nicolas, Nick.]
Greek Unicode Issues: Punctuation
. 2005. Accessed 7 Oct 2014.) Although
modern Greek
Modern Greek (, , or , ''Kiní Neoellinikí Glóssa''), generally referred to by speakers simply as Greek (, ), refers collectively to the dialects of the Greek language spoken in the modern era, including the official standardized form of the ...
now uses the
Latin
Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through ...
hyphen
The hyphen is a punctuation mark used to join words and to separate syllables of a single word. The use of hyphens is called hyphenation. ''Son-in-law'' is an example of a hyphenated word. The hyphen is sometimes confused with dashes ( figure ...
, the
Hellenic Organization for Standardization The Hellenic Organization for Standardization ( el, Ελληνικός Οργανισμός Τυποποίησης, ''Ellīnikós Organismós Typopoíīsīs''; abbreviated ΕΛΟΤ in Greek and ELOT in English) is the national standards organizatio ...
included mention of the enotikon in its
romanization standard[ [''Ellīnikós Organismós Typopoíīsīs'', "]Hellenic Organization for Standardization The Hellenic Organization for Standardization ( el, Ελληνικός Οργανισμός Τυποποίησης, ''Ellīnikós Organismós Typopoíīsīs''; abbreviated ΕΛΟΤ in Greek and ELOT in English) is the national standards organizatio ...
"]. [''ELOT 743, 2ī Ekdosī'', "ELOT 743, "]. ELOT (Athens), 2001. . and Unicode is able to reproduce the symbol with its characters and .
The enotikon was also used in Greek musical notation
The musical system of ancient Greece evolved over a period of more than 500 years from simple scales of tetrachords, or divisions of the perfect fourth, into several complex systems encompassing tetrachords and octaves, as well as octave scales d ...
, as a slur under two notes. When a syllable was sung with three notes, this slur was used in combination with a double point
In geometry, a singular point on a curve is one where the curve is not given by a smooth embedding of a parameter. The precise definition of a singular point depends on the type of curve being studied.
Algebraic curves in the plane
Algebraic cur ...
and a diseme overline.[''Ancient Greek music'', Martin Litchfield West, 1994, p. 267.]
Vocal music scores
In musical score engraving
Engraving is the practice of incising a design onto a hard, usually flat surface by cutting grooves into it with a burin. The result may be a decorated object in itself, as when silver, gold, steel, or glass are engraved, or may provide an in ...
, the undertie symbol is called an "elision slur" or "lyric slur", and is used to indicate synalepha: the elision of two or more spoken syllables into a single note; this is in contrast to the more common melisma, the extension of a ''single'' spoken syllable over ''multiple'' sung notes. Although rare in English texts, synalepha is often encountered in musical lyrics written in the Romance languages
The Romance languages, sometimes referred to as Latin languages or Neo-Latin languages, are the various modern languages that evolved from Vulgar Latin. They are the only extant subgroup of the Italic languages in the Indo-European language ...
.
In use, the undertie is placed between the words of the lyric that are to be sung as one note to prevent the space between them being interpreted as a syllable break. For example, in the printed lyric "the‿im - mor - tal air", the undertie between "the" and "im-" instructs the singer to elide these two syllables into one, thus reducing five spoken syllables into four sung notes.
International Phonetic Alphabet
The International Phonetic Alphabet
The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is an alphabetic system of phonetic notation based primarily on the Latin script. It was devised by the International Phonetic Association in the late 19th century as a standardized representation ...
uses two type of ties: the ligature tie (IPA #433), above or below two symbols and the undertie (IPA #509) between two symbols.
Ligature tie
The ligature tie, also called double inverted breve, is used to represent double articulation (e.g. ), affricates
An affricate is a consonant that begins as a stop and releases as a fricative, generally with the same place of articulation (most often coronal). It is often difficult to decide if a stop and fricative form a single phoneme or a consonant pa ...
(e.g. ) or prenasalized consonants (e.g. ) in the IPA. It is mostly found above but can also be found below when more suitable (e.g. ).
On computers, it is encoded with characters and, as an alternative when ascenders might be interfering with the bow, .
Undertie
The undertie is used to represent linking (absence of a break) in the International Phonetic Alphabet. For example, it is used to indicate liaison (e.g. ) but can also be used for other types of sandhi
Sandhi ( sa, सन्धि ' , "joining") is a cover term for a wide variety of sound changes that occur at morpheme or word boundaries. Examples include fusion of sounds across word boundaries and the alteration of one sound depending on near ...
.
On computers, the character used is . This is a spacing character, not to be confused with the alternative (below-letter) form of the ligature tie (a͜b ), which is a combining character
In digital typography, combining characters are characters that are intended to modify other characters. The most common combining characters in the Latin script are the combining diacritical marks (including combining accents).
Unicode al ...
.
Uralic Phonetic Alphabet
The Uralic Phonetic Alphabet
The Uralic Phonetic Alphabet (UPA) or Finno-Ugric transcription system is a phonetic transcription or notational system used predominantly for the transcription and reconstruction of Uralic languages. It was first published in 1901 by Eemil Nes ...
uses several forms of the tie or double breve:
* The triple inverted breve or triple breve below indicates a triphthong
* The double inverted breve, also known as the ligature tie, marks a diphthong
A diphthong ( ; , ), also known as a gliding vowel, is a combination of two adjacent vowel sounds within the same syllable. Technically, a diphthong is a vowel with two different targets: that is, the tongue (and/or other parts of the speech ...
* The double inverted breve below indicates a syllable boundary between vowels
* The undertie is used for prosody
* The inverted undertie is used for prosody.
Other uses
The double breve is used in the phonetic notation of the American Heritage Dictionary
American(s) may refer to:
* American, something of, from, or related to the United States of America, commonly known as the "United States" or "America"
** Americans, citizens and nationals of the United States of America
** American ancestry, p ...
in combination with a double o, o͝o, to represent the near-close near-back rounded vowel ( in IPA).
The triple breve below is used in the phonetic writing Rheinische Dokumenta
The Rheinische Dokumenta () is a phonetic writing system developed in the early 1980s by a working group of academics, linguists, local language experts, and local language speakers of the Rhineland.
It was presented to the public in 1986 by the ...
for three-letter combinations.
In the field of computing, the Unicode character is used to represent concatenation of sequences in Z notation
The Z notation is a formal specification language used for describing and modelling computing systems. It is targeted at the clear specification of computer programs and computer-based systems in general.
History
In 1974, Jean-Raymond Abria ...
. For example, "s⁀t" represents the concatenation sequence of sequences called ''s'' and ''t'', while the notation "⁀/q" is the distributed concatenation of the sequence of sequences called ''q''.''The Z Notation: a reference manual''
, J. M. Spivey.
In
proofreading
Proofreading is the reading of a galley proof or an electronic copy of a publication to find and correct reproduction errors of text or art. Proofreading is the final step in the editorial cycle before publication.
Professional
Traditional ...
, the undertie was used to indicate that word in a manuscript had been divided incorrectly by a space. (See
Hyphen#Origin and history). The indicator used in modern practice is convention is .
Encoding
The diacritic signs triple inverted breve, triple breve, and double inverted breve have not yet been encoded for computers.
Unicode has characters similar to the tie:
* and
* and
* , which is a
proofreading mark
See also
*
Typographic ligature
In writing and typography, a ligature occurs where two or more graphemes or letters are joined to form a single glyph. Examples are the characters æ and œ used in English and French, in which the letters 'a' and 'e' are joined for the firs ...
*
Legato
*
Breve
*
Inverted breve
*
Underscore
An underscore, ; also called an underline, low line, or low dash; is a line drawn under a segment of text. In proofreading, underscoring is a convention that says "set this text in italic type", traditionally used on manuscript or typescript ...
References
{{navbox punctuation
Greek-script diacritics
Palaeography
Phonetic transcription symbols
Punctuation
Typography
Ancient Greek punctuation