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When used 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 ''diacriti ...
mark, the term dot is usually reserved for the ''
interpunct An interpunct , also known as an interpoint, middle dot, middot and centered dot or centred dot, is a punctuation mark consisting of a vertically centered dot used for interword separation in ancient Latin script. (Word-separating spaces did no ...
'' ( · ), or to the
glyph A glyph () is any kind of purposeful mark. In typography, a glyph is "the specific shape, design, or representation of a character". It is a particular graphical representation, in a particular typeface, of an element of written language. A g ...
s "combining dot above" ( ◌̇ ) and "combining dot below" ( ◌̣ ) which may be combined with some letters of the extended Latin alphabets in use in Central European languages and Vietnamese.


Dots


Overdot

Language scripts or transcription schemes that use the dot above a letter as a diacritical mark: * In some forms of Arabic romanization, stands for ''
ghayin The Arabic letter ( ar, غَيْنْ ' or ') is the nineteenth letter of the Arabic alphabet, one of the six letters not in the twenty-two akin to the Phoenician alphabet (the others being , , , , ), it represents the sound or . In name and ...
'' (غ); stands for qāf (ق). * The Latin orthography for Chechen includes ċ, ç̇, ġ, q̇, and ẋ. * In
Emilian-Romagnol Emilian-Romagnol is a linguistic continuum part of the Gallo-Romance languages spoken in the northern Italian region of Emilia-Romagna. It is divided into two main varieties: Emilian and Romagnol. While first registered under a single code in ...
, ''ṅ ṡ ż'' are used to represent . * Traditional Irish typography, where the dot denotes lenition, and is called a or "dot of lenition": ''ḃ ċ ḋ ḟ ġ ṁ ṗ ṡ ṫ''. Alternatively, lenition may be represented by a following letter ''h'', thus: ''bh ch dh fh gh mh ph sh th''. In Old Irish orthography, the dot was used only for ''ḟ ṡ'', while the following ''h'' was used for ''ch ph th''; lenition of other letters was not indicated. Later the two systems spread to the entire set of lenitable consonants and competed with each other. Eventually the standard practice was to use the dot when writing in Gaelic script and the following ''h'' when writing in antiqua. Thus ''ċ'' and ''ch'' represent the same phonetic element in Modern Irish. * lt, ė is pronounced as , as opposed to ''ę'', which is pronounced a lower (formerly
nasalised In phonetics, nasalization (or nasalisation) is the production of a sound while the velum is lowered, so that some air escapes through the nose during the production of the sound by the mouth. An archetypal nasal sound is . In the Internationa ...
), or ''e'', pronounced . * Livonian uses ȯ as one of its eight vowels. * mt, ċ is used for a voiceless palato-alveolar affricate, ''ġ'' for a voiced palato-alveolar affricate, and ''ż'' for a
voiced alveolar sibilant The voiced alveolar fricatives are consonantal sounds. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents these sounds depends on whether a sibilant or non-sibilant fricative is being described. * The symbol for the alveolar sibilant ...
. * Middle English: ''ẏ'' was sometimes used to distinguish etymological ''y'' from the glyph's use as a replacement for '' þ'', which did not exist in early press typographies. *
Old English Old English (, ), or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest recorded form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the early Middle Ages. It was brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain, Anglo ...
: In modernized orthography, ''ċ'' is used for a voiceless palato-alveolar affricate , ''ġ'' for a
palatal approximant The voiced palatal approximant, or yod, is a type of consonant used in many spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is . The equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is j, and in the Americanist phonetic no ...
(probably a voiced palatal fricative in the earliest texts), and (more rarely) ''sċ'' for a voiceless palato-alveolar fricative and ''cġ'' for a voiced palato-alveolar affricate . * pl, ż is used for a
voiced retroflex sibilant The voiced retroflex sibilant fricative is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is , and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is z`. Like all the retrof ...
. * The
Sioux The Sioux or Oceti Sakowin (; Dakota language, Dakota: Help:IPA, /otʃʰeːtʰi ʃakoːwĩ/) are groups of Native Americans in the United States, Native American tribes and First Nations in Canada, First Nations peoples in North America. The ...
languages such as Lakota,
Osage The Osage Nation, a Native American tribe in the United States, is the source of most other terms containing the word "osage". Osage can also refer to: * Osage language, a Dhaegin language traditionally spoken by the Osage Nation * Osage (Unicode b ...
, and Crow sometimes use the dot above to indicate ejective stops. * In the
Canadian Aboriginal Syllabics Canadian syllabic writing, or simply syllabics, is a family of writing systems used in a number of Indigenous Canadian languages of the Algonquian, Inuit, and (formerly) Athabaskan language families. These languages had no formal writing s ...
orthography for the
Cree The Cree ( cr, néhinaw, script=Latn, , etc.; french: link=no, Cri) are a Indigenous peoples of the Americas, North American Indigenous people. They live primarily in Canada, where they form one of the country's largest First Nations in Canada ...
, Ojibwe, and
Inuktitut Inuktitut (; , syllabics ; from , "person" + , "like", "in the manner of"), also Eastern Canadian Inuktitut, is one of the principal Inuit languages of Canada. It is spoken in all areas north of the tree line, including parts of the provinces o ...
languages, a dot above a symbol signifies that the symbol's vowel should be a long vowel—the equivalent effect using the Roman orthography is achieved by doubling the vowel (ᒥ = mi, ᒦ = mii ), placing a macron over the vowel (ᑲ = ka, ᑳ = kā), or placing a
circumflex The circumflex () is a diacritic in the Latin and Greek scripts that is also used in the written forms of many languages and in various romanization and transcription schemes. It received its English name from la, circumflexus "bent around"a ...
over the vowel (ᓄ = no, ᓅ = nô). * In
Turkish Turkish may refer to: *a Turkic language spoken by the Turks * of or about Turkey ** Turkish language *** Turkish alphabet ** Turkish people, a Turkic ethnic group and nation *** Turkish citizen, a citizen of Turkey *** Turkish communities and mi ...
, the dot above lowercase '' i'' and '' j'' (and uppercase '' İ'') is not regarded as an independent diacritic but as an integral part of the letter. It is called a tittle. I without an overdot is a separate letter. * In the
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 L ...
phonetic writing system overdots denote a special pronunciation of ''r''. * The Ulithian alphabet includes ȧ, ė, and ȯ. * The ISO 9 (1968) Romanization of Cyrillic uses ''ė'', ''ḟ'', and ''ẏ''. * In the
ISO 259 ISO 259 is a series of international standards for the romanization of Hebrew characters into Latin characters, dating to 1984, with updated ISO 259-2 (a simplification, disregarding several vowel signs, 1994) and ISO 259-3 (Phonemic Conversion, 1 ...
Romanization of Hebrew, the overdot is used to transcribe the dagesh: ; transcribes the shuruk. * In
IAST The International Alphabet of Sanskrit Transliteration (IAST) is a transliteration scheme that allows the lossless romanisation of Indic scripts as employed by Sanskrit and related Indic languages. It is based on a scheme that emerged during ...
and
National Library at Calcutta romanization The National Library at Kolkata romanisationSee p 24-26 for table comparing Indic languages, and p 33-34 for Devanagari alphabet listing. is a widely used transliteration scheme in dictionaries and grammars of Indic languages. This transliterat ...
transcribing languages of India, ''ṅ'' is used to represent . * UNGEGN romanization of Urdu includes ṙ. * In the Venda language, ''ṅ'' is used to represent . * Some countries use the overdot as a decimal mark. The overdot is also used in the Devanagari script, where it is called anusvara. In
mathematics Mathematics is an area of knowledge that includes the topics of numbers, formulas and related structures, shapes and the spaces in which they are contained, and quantities and their changes. These topics are represented in modern mathematics ...
and physics, when using Newton's notation the dot denotes the time derivative as in v=\dot. In addition, the overdot is one way used to indicate an infinitely repeating set of numbers in decimal notation, as in 0.\dot, which is equal to the fraction , and 0.\dot\dot\dot\dot\dot\dot or 0.\dot4285\dot, which is equal to .


Underdot

* In a number of languages, an underdot indicates a raised or relatively high vowel, often the counterpart of a lower vowel marked with an
ogonek The (; Polish: , "little tail", diminutive of ) is a diacritic hook placed under the lower right corner of a vowel in the Latin alphabet used in several European languages, and directly under a vowel in several Native American languages. It i ...
or left unmarked. ** In Rotuman, "ạ" represents /ɔ/. ** In
Romagnol Romagnol ( or ; it, romagnolo) is a Romance languages, Romance language spoken in the historical region of Romagna, consisting mainly of the southeastern part of Emilia-Romagna, Italy. The name is derived from the Lombard language, Lombard name ...
, ''ẹ ọ'' are used to represent
, o The comma is a punctuation mark that appears in several variants in different languages. It has the same shape as an apostrophe or single closing quotation mark () in many typefaces, but it differs from them in being placed on the baseline o ...
e.g. part of Riminese dialect ''fradẹll, ọcc'' "brothers, eyes". ** In academic notation of Old Latin, ''ẹ̄'' (''e'' with underdot and macron) represents the long vowel, probably , that developed from the early Old Latin diphthong ''ei''. This vowel usually became ''ī'' in Classical Latin. ** In academic transcription of
Vulgar Latin Vulgar Latin, also known as Popular or Colloquial Latin, is the range of non-formal Register (sociolinguistics), registers of Latin spoken from the Crisis of the Roman Republic, Late Roman Republic onward. Through time, Vulgar Latin would evolve ...
, used in describing the development of the Romance languages, ẹ and ọ represent the close-mid vowels and , in contrast with the open-mid vowels and , which are represented as ''e'' and ''o'' with
ogonek The (; Polish: , "little tail", diminutive of ) is a diacritic hook placed under the lower right corner of a vowel in the Latin alphabet used in several European languages, and directly under a vowel in several Native American languages. It i ...
(ę ǫ). ** Academic transcription of Middle English uses the same conventions as Vulgar Latin above. ** In academic transcription of Serbo-Croatian dialects, ''ẹ ọ ạ'' (typically ) represent higher vowels than standard ''e o a'', and the first two often contrast with lower vowels marked with a
comma below The comma is a punctuation mark that appears in several variants in different languages. It has the same shape as an apostrophe or single closing quotation mark () in many typefaces, but it differs from them in being placed on the baseline o ...
, ''e̦ o̦'' (typically ). * In
Inari Sami Inari may refer to: Shinto * Inari Ōkami, a Shinto spirit ** Mount Inari in Japan, site of Fushimi Inari-taisha, the main Shinto shrine to Inari ** Inari Shrine, shrines to the Shinto god Inari * Inari-zushi, a type of sushi Places * Inari, ...
, an underdot denotes a half-long voiced consonant: ''đ̣, j̣, ḷ, ṃ, ṇ, ṇj, ŋ̣, ṛ'', and ''ṿ''. The underdot is used in dictionaries, textbooks, and linguistic publications only. * In
IAST The International Alphabet of Sanskrit Transliteration (IAST) is a transliteration scheme that allows the lossless romanisation of Indic scripts as employed by Sanskrit and related Indic languages. It is based on a scheme that emerged during ...
and
National Library at Calcutta romanization The National Library at Kolkata romanisationSee p 24-26 for table comparing Indic languages, and p 33-34 for Devanagari alphabet listing. is a widely used transliteration scheme in dictionaries and grammars of Indic languages. This transliterat ...
, transcribing languages of India, a dot below a letter distinguishes the retroflex consonants ''ṭ, ḍ, ṛ, ḷ, ṇ, ṣ'', while ''m'' with underdot (''ṃ'') signifies an '' anusvara'' and ''h'' with underdot (''ḥ'') signifies a ''
visarga Visarga ( sa, विसर्गः, translit=visargaḥ) means "sending forth, discharge". In Sanskrit phonology ('' ''), ' (also called, equivalently, ' by earlier grammarians) is the name of a phone voiceless glottal fricative, , written as: ...
''. Very frequently (in modern transliterations of Sanskrit) an underdot is used instead of the ring (diacritic) below the vocalic ''r'' and ''l''. * In romanizations of some Afroasiatic languages, particularly Semitic Languages and
Berber Languages The Berber languages, also known as the Amazigh languages or Tamazight,, ber, label=Tuareg Tifinagh, ⵜⵎⵣⵗⵜ, ) are a branch of the Afroasiatic language family. They comprise a group of closely related languages spoken by Berber commun ...
, an underdot indicates an
emphatic consonant In Semitic linguistics, an emphatic consonant is an obstruent consonant which originally contrasted with series of both voiced and voiceless obstruents. In specific Semitic languages, the members of this series may be realized as uvularized or ...
. The romanization of Arabic uses . * In the DIN 31636 and ALA-LC Romanization of Hebrew, ''ṿ'' represents vav ( ו), while ''v'' without the underdot represents beth ( ב). ''ḳ'' represents qoph ( ק) * The underdot is also used in the PDA orthography for Domari to show pharyngealization—the underdotted consonants represent the emphaticized sounds . *In Asturian, ''
Ḷ (minuscule: ḷ) is a letter of the Latin alphabet, derived from L with a diacritical dot below. It is or was used in some languages to represent various sounds. *In Asturian, a digraph (Ḷḷ, lower case: ḷḷ) is used to represent som ...
Ḷ (minuscule: ḷ) is a letter of the Latin alphabet, derived from L with a diacritical dot below. It is or was used in some languages to represent various sounds. *In Asturian, a digraph (Ḷḷ, lower case: ḷḷ) is used to represent som ...
'' (underdotted double ''ll'') represents the
voiced retroflex plosive The voiced retroflex plosive or stop is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is , and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is d`. Like all the retroflex ...
or the voiceless retroflex affricate, depending on dialect, and ''ḥ'' (underdotted ''h'') the voiceless glottal fricative. *In O'odham language, ''
Ḍ (minuscule: ḍ) is a letter of the Latin alphabet, formed from D with the addition of a dot diacritic. In the transcription of Afro-Asiatic languages such as Arabic, ⟨ḍ⟩ represents an " emphatic" consonant , and is used for that purp ...
'' (''d'' with underdot) represents a voiced retroflex stop. * Vietnamese: The ''nặng'' tone (low, glottal) is represented with a dot below the base vowel: ''ạ ặ ậ ẹ ệ ị ọ ộ ợ ụ ự ỵ''. * In Igbo, an underdot can be used on ''i'', ''o'', and ''u'' to make ''ị'', ''ọ'', and ''ụ''. The underdot symbolizes a reduction in the vowel height. * In
Yoruba The Yoruba people (, , ) are a West African ethnic group that mainly inhabit parts of Nigeria, Benin, and Togo. The areas of these countries primarily inhabited by Yoruba are often collectively referred to as Yorubaland. The Yoruba constitute ...
, an underdot can be used on ''e'' and ''o'' to make ''ẹ'' and ''ọ'', symbolizing a reduction in the vowel height, as well as on ''s'' to make ''ṣ'', symbolizing a
postalveolar Postalveolar or post-alveolar consonants are consonants articulated with the tongue near or touching the ''back'' of the alveolar ridge. Articulation is farther back in the mouth than the alveolar consonants, which are at the ridge itself, but no ...
articulation. * In Americanist phonetic notation, ''x'' with underdot ''
X̣ (minuscule: x̣) is a letter of the Latin alphabet, taken from an X with a dot below the letter. It is hard to render in computers because it is not used in the most common languages. It is used in the Livonian language The Livonian langua ...
'' represents a voiceless uvular fricative. * Underdots are used in the
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 L ...
phonetic writing system to denote a voiced ''s'' and special pronunciations of ''r'' and ''a''. * In the Fiero-Rhodes orthography for Eastern Ojibwe and
Odaawaa The Odawa (also Ottawa or Odaawaa ), said to mean "traders", are an Indigenous American ethnic group who primarily inhabit land in the Eastern Woodlands region, commonly known as the northeastern United States and southeastern Canada. They ha ...
, in ''g̣'', ''ḥ'', and ''ḳ'', underdot is used to indicate
labialization Labialization is a secondary articulatory feature of sounds in some languages. Labialized sounds involve the lips while the remainder of the oral cavity produces another sound. The term is normally restricted to consonants. When vowels involve ...
when either or following them was lost in syncope. * The Sicilian nexus ''ḍḍ'' is used to represent . * In Kalabari, ''ḅ'' and ''ḍ'' are used. * In Marshallese, underdots on consonants represent velarization, such as the velarized bilabial nasal ''ṃ''. * In
Old Irish typography Old or OLD may refer to: Places * Old, Baranya, Hungary * Old, Northamptonshire, England *Old Street station, a railway and tube station in London (station code OLD) *OLD, IATA code for Old Town Municipal Airport and Seaplane Base, Old Town, M ...
the letters ḃ, ḋ and ṫ are some times written as ḅ, ḍ and ṭ. * UNGEGN romanization of Urdu includes ḍ, g̣, ḳ, ṭ, ẉ, and ỵ. * In
Mizo Mizo may refer to: *Mizo people, an ethnic group native to north-eastern India, western Myanmar (Burma) and eastern Bangladesh *Mizo language, a language spoken by the Mizo people *Mizoram, a state in Northeast India *Lusei people, an ethnic group ...
, ''ṭ'' represents . * The underdot is also used in the Devanagari script, where it is called nukta.


Raised dot

* Number digits in Enclosed Alphanumerics: ' * In
Canadian Aboriginal Syllabics Canadian syllabic writing, or simply syllabics, is a family of writing systems used in a number of Indigenous Canadian languages of the Algonquian, Inuit, and (formerly) Athabaskan language families. These languages had no formal writing s ...
, in addition to the middle dot as a letter, centred dot diacritic, and dot above diacritic, there also is a two-dot diacritic in the
Naskapi language Naskapi (also known as ᐃᔪᐤ ᐃᔨᒧᐅᓐ/Iyuw Iyimuun in the Naskapi language) is an Algonquian language spoken by the Naskapi in Quebec and Labrador, Canada. It is written in Eastern Cree syllabics. The term Naskapi is chiefly used to ...
representing /_w_V/ which depending on the placement on the specific Syllabic letter may resemble a colon when placed vertically, diaeresis when placed horizontally, or a combination of middle dot and dot above diacritic when placed either at an angle or enveloping a small raised letter . Additionally, in Northwestern Ojibwe, a small raised /wi/ as /w/, the middle dot is raised farther up as either or ; there also is a raised dot Final , which represents /w/ in some Swampy Cree and /y/ in some Northwestern Ojibwe.


Letters with dot


Encoding

In Unicode, the dot is encoded at: * and at: * * * There is also: * * Pre-composed characters: *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *                     *                   *                   *                   *                   *                   *                   *                   *                   *                   *                   *           *           *             *       *       *       *       *             *       *         *     *   *   *   *     *  


See also

*
Anunaasika Anusvara (Sanskrit: ') is a symbol used in many Indic scripts to mark a type of nasal sound, typically transliterated . Depending on its location in the word and the language for which it is used, its exact pronunciation can vary. In the context ...
*
Chandrabindu Chandrabindu (IAST: , in Sanskrit) is a diacritic sign with the form of a dot inside the lower half of a circle. It is used in the Devanagari (ँ), Bengali-Assamese (), Gujarati (ઁ), Odia (ଁ), Telugu (ఁ), Javanese ( ꦀ) and other scr ...
*
Diaeresis (diacritic) The diaeresis ( ; is a diacritical mark used to indicate the separation of two distinct vowels in adjacent syllables when an instance of diaeresis (or hiatus) occurs, so as to distinguish from a digraph or diphthong. It consists of two dots ...
* Tittle * Arabic alphabet * Hebrew diacritics * Mathematical operators and symbols in Unicode ** Therefore sign (∴ and "because sign" ∵) ** Ratio () ** Proportionality (mathematics) (∷)


References


External links


Diacritics Project — All you need to design a font with correct accents
{{Latin script, , dot Latin-script diacritics Diakrytyka Vietnamese alphabets