A macron ( ) is a
diacritical mark: it is a straight bar placed above a letter, usually a
vowel
A vowel is a speech sound pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract, forming the nucleus of a syllable. Vowels are one of the two principal classes of speech sounds, the other being the consonant. Vowels vary in quality, in loudness a ...
. Its name derives from
Ancient Greek
Ancient Greek (, ; ) includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the classical antiquity, ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), Greek ...
(''makrón'') 'long' because it was originally used to mark
long or heavy syllable
A syllable is a basic unit of organization within a sequence of speech sounds, such as within a word, typically defined by linguists as a ''nucleus'' (most often a vowel) with optional sounds before or after that nucleus (''margins'', which are ...
s in
Greco-Roman metrics. It now more often marks a
long vowel
A vowel is a speech sound pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract, forming the nucleus of a syllable. Vowels are one of the two principal classes of speech sounds, the other being the consonant. Vowels vary in quality, in loudness a ...
. In 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 standard written representation ...
, the macron is used to indicate a
mid-tone; the sign for a long vowel is instead a modified triangular
colon .
The opposite is the
breve
A breve ( , less often , grammatical gender, neuter form of the Latin "short, brief") is the diacritic mark , shaped like the bottom half of a circle. As used in Ancient Greek, it is also called , . It resembles the caron (, the wedge or in ...
, which marks a short or light syllable or a short vowel.
Uses
Syllable weight
In
Greco-Roman metrics and in the description of the metrics of other literatures, the macron was introduced and is still widely used in dictionaries and educational materials to mark a
long (heavy) syllable. Even relatively recent classical Greek and Latin dictionaries are still concerned with indicating only the length (weight) of syllables; that is why most still do not indicate the length of vowels in syllables that are otherwise metrically determined. Many textbooks about Ancient Rome and Greece use the macron, even if it was not actually used at that time (an
apex was used if vowel length was marked in Latin).
Vowel length
The following languages or transliteration systems use the macron to mark
long vowels:
*
Slavicists use the macron to indicate a non-tonic long vowel, or a non-tonic syllabic liquid, such as on ''a'', ''e'', ''r'', or ''u''. Languages with this feature include standard and dialect varieties of
Serbo-Croatian
Serbo-Croatian ( / ), also known as Bosnian-Croatian-Montenegrin-Serbian (BCMS), is a South Slavic language and the primary language of Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Montenegro. It is a pluricentric language with four mutually i ...
,
Slovene, and
Bulgarian.
* Transcriptions of
Arabic
Arabic (, , or , ) is a Central Semitic languages, Central Semitic language of the Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic language family spoken primarily in the Arab world. The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) assigns lang ...
typically use macrons to indicate long vowels – (
alif when pronounced ), (
waw, when pronounced or ), and (
ya', when pronounced or ). Thus the Arabic word (three) is transliterated ''thalāthah''.
*Transcriptions of
Sanskrit
Sanskrit (; stem form ; nominal singular , ,) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan languages, Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in northwest South Asia after its predecessor languages had Trans-cultural ...
typically use a macron over ā, ī, ū, ṝ, and ḹ in order to mark a long vowel (e and o are always long and consequently do not need any macron).
* In
Latin
Latin ( or ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally spoken by the Latins (Italic tribe), Latins in Latium (now known as Lazio), the lower Tiber area aroun ...
, many of the more recent dictionaries and learning materials use the macron as the modern equivalent of the ancient Roman
apex to mark long vowels. Any of the six vowel letters ''(ā, ē, ī, ō, ū, ȳ)'' can bear it. It is sometimes used in conjunction with the
breve
A breve ( , less often , grammatical gender, neuter form of the Latin "short, brief") is the diacritic mark , shaped like the bottom half of a circle. As used in Ancient Greek, it is also called , . It resembles the caron (, the wedge or in ...
, especially to distinguish the short vowels and from their semi-vowel counterparts and , originally, and often to this day, spelt with the same letters. However, the older of these editions are not always explicit on whether they mark long vowels or heavy syllables – a confusion that is even found in some modern learning materials. In addition, most of the newest academic publications use both the macron and the breve sparingly, mainly when vowel length is relevant to the discussion.
*In
romanization
In linguistics, romanization is the conversion of text from a different writing system to the Latin script, Roman (Latin) script, or a system for doing so. Methods of romanization include transliteration, for representing written text, and tra ...
of
classical Greek
Ancient Greek (, ; ) includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), Dark Ages (), the Archa ...
, the letters
η (''eta'') and
ω (''omega'') are transliterated, respectively, as ''ē'' and ''ō'', representing the long vowels of classical Greek, whereas the short vowels
ε (''epsilon'') and
ο (''omicron'') are always transliterated as plain ''e'' and ''o.'' The other long vowel phonemes do not have dedicated letters in the
Greek alphabet
The Greek alphabet has been used to write the Greek language since the late 9th or early 8th century BC. It was derived from the earlier Phoenician alphabet, and is the earliest known alphabetic script to systematically write vowels as wel ...
, being indicated by digraphs (transliterated likewise as digraphs) or by the letters
α,
ι,
υ – represented as ''ā, ī, ū''. The same three letters are transliterated as plain ''a, i, u'' when representing short vowels.
* The
Hepburn romanization
is the main system of Romanization of Japanese, romanization for the Japanese language. The system was originally published in 1867 by American Christian missionary and physician James Curtis Hepburn as the standard in the first edition of h ...
system of
Japanese, for example, ''tā'' () as opposed to ''ta'' ().
* The
Syriac language
The Syriac language ( ; ), also known natively in its spoken form in early Syriac literature as Edessan (), the Mesopotamian language () and Aramaic (), is an Aramaic#Eastern Middle Aramaic, Eastern Middle Aramaic dialect. Classical Syriac is ...
uses macrons to indicate long vowels in its romanized transliteration: ''ā'' for , ''ē'' for , ''ū'' for and ''ō'' for .
*
Baltic languages and
Baltic-Finnic languages:
**
Latvian. ''ā'', ''ē'', ''ī'', ''ū'' are separate letters but are given the same position in
collation as ''a'', ''e'', ''i'', ''u'' respectively. ''Ō'' was also used in Latvian, but it was discarded as of 1946. Some usage remains in
Latgalian.
**
Lithuanian. ''ū'' is a separate letter but is given the same position in
collation as the unaccented ''u''. It marks a long vowel; other long vowels are indicated with an
ogonek
The tail or ( ; 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 langu ...
(which used to indicate nasalization, but it no longer does): ''ą'', ''ę'', ''į'', ''ų'' and ''o'' being always long in Lithuanian except for some recent loanwords. For the long counterpart of ''i'', ''y'' is used.
**
Livonian. ''ā'', ''ǟ'', ''ē'', ''ī'', ''ō'', ''ȱ'', ''ȭ'' and ''ū'' are separate letters that sort in alphabetical order immediately after ''a'', ''ä'', ''e'', ''i'', ''o'', ''ȯ'', ''õ'', and ''u'', respectively.
**
Samogitian. ''ā'', ''ē'', ''ė̄'', ''ī'', ''ū'' and ''ō'' are separate letters that sort in alphabetical order immediately after ''a'', ''e'', ''ė'', ''i'', ''u'' and ''o'' respectively.
* Transcriptions of
Nahuatl
Nahuatl ( ; ), Aztec, or Mexicano is a language or, by some definitions, a group of languages of the Uto-Aztecan language family. Varieties of Nahuatl are spoken by about Nahuas, most of whom live mainly in Central Mexico and have smaller popul ...
, the
Aztecs' language, spoken in
Mexico
Mexico, officially the United Mexican States, is a country in North America. It is the northernmost country in Latin America, and borders the United States to the north, and Guatemala and Belize to the southeast; while having maritime boundar ...
. When the Spanish conquistadors arrived, they wrote the language in their own alphabet without distinguishing long vowels. Over a century later, in 1645,
Horacio Carochi defined macrons to mark long vowels ''ā'', ''ē'', ''ī'' and ''ō'', and short vowels with grave (`) accents. This is rare nowadays since many people write Nahuatl without any orthographic sign and with the letters ''k'', ''s'' and ''w'', not present in the original alphabet.
* Modern transcriptions of
Old English
Old English ( or , or ), 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 developed from the languages brought to Great Britain by Anglo-S ...
, for long vowels.
* Latin transliteration of
Pali
Pāli (, IAST: pāl̤i) is a Classical languages of India, classical Middle Indo-Aryan languages, Middle Indo-Aryan language of the Indian subcontinent. It is widely studied because it is the language of the Buddhist ''Pali Canon, Pāli Can ...
and
Sanskrit
Sanskrit (; stem form ; nominal singular , ,) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan languages, Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in northwest South Asia after its predecessor languages had Trans-cultural ...
, and in the
IAST and
ISO 15919 transcriptions of
Indo-Aryan and
Dravidian languages
The Dravidian languages are a language family, family of languages spoken by 250 million people, primarily in South India, north-east Sri Lanka, and south-west Pakistan, with pockets elsewhere in South Asia.
The most commonly spoken Dravidian l ...
.
*
Polynesian languages:
**
Cook Islands Māori. In Cook Islands Māori, the macron or ''mākarōna'' is not commonly used in writing, but is used in references and teaching materials for those learning the language.
**
Hawaiian. The macron is called ''kahakō'', and it indicates vowel length, which changes meaning and the placement of
stress.
**
Māori. In modern written Māori, the macron is used to designate long vowels, with the
trema mark sometimes used if the macron is unavailable (e.g. "wähine"). The Māori word for macron is ''tohutō.'' The term ''pōtae'' ("hat") is also used. In the past, writing in Māori either did not distinguish vowel length, or doubled long vowels (e.g. "waahine"), as some
iwi dialects still do.
**
Niuean. In Niuean, "popular spelling" does not worry too much about vowel quantity (length), so the macron is primarily used in scholarly study of the language.
**
Tahitian. The use of the macron is comparatively recent in Tahitian. The ''Fare Vānaa'' or ''Académie Tahitienne'' (Tahitian Academy) recommends using the macron, called the ''tārava,'' to represent long vowels in written text, especially for scientific or teaching texts and it has widespread acceptance. (In the past, written Tahitian either did not distinguish vowel length, or used multiple other ways).
**
Tongan and
Samoan. The macron is called the ''toloi/fakamamafa'' or ''fa'amamafa'', respectively. Its usage is similar to that in Māori, including its substitution by a trema. Its usage is not universal in Samoan, but recent academic publications and advanced study textbooks promote its use.
* The macron is used in
Fijian language
Fijian (') or iTaukei is an Austronesian languages, Austronesian language of the Malayo-Polynesian languages, Malayo-Polynesian family spoken by some 350,000–450,000 ethnic Fijians as a native language. The 1997 Constitution of Fiji#New Consti ...
dictionaries, in instructional materials for non-Fijian speakers, and in books and papers on Fijian linguistics. It is not typically used in Fijian publications intended for fluent speakers, where context is usually sufficient for a reader to distinguish between
heteronyms.
* Both
Cyrillic
The Cyrillic script ( ) is a writing system used for various languages across Eurasia. It is the designated national script in various Slavic, Turkic, Mongolic, Uralic, Caucasian and Iranic-speaking countries in Southeastern Europe, Ea ...
and Latin transcriptions of
Udege.
* The Latin and Cyrillic alphabet transcriptions of the Tsebari dialect of
Tsez.
* In western
Cree
The Cree, or nehinaw (, ), are a Indigenous peoples of the Americas, North American Indigenous people, numbering more than 350,000 in Canada, where they form one of the country's largest First Nations in Canada, First Nations. They live prim ...
,
Sauk, and
Saulteaux, the Algonquianist Standard Roman Orthography (SRO) indicates long vowels either with 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 "bent around"a translation of ...
⟨''â ê î ô''⟩ or with a macron ⟨''ā ē ī ō''⟩.
Tone
The following languages or alphabets use the macron to mark
tones:
* In 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 standard written representation ...
, a macron over a vowel indicates a mid-level tone.
* In
Yoruba an optional macron can be used to indicate mid-level tone if it would otherwise be ambiguous.
* In
Pinyin
Hanyu Pinyin, or simply pinyin, officially the Chinese Phonetic Alphabet, is the most common romanization system for Standard Chinese. ''Hanyu'' () literally means 'Han Chinese, Han language'—that is, the Chinese language—while ''pinyin' ...
, the official
Romanization of Mandarin Chinese, macrons over a, e, i, o, u, ü (ā, ē, ī, ō, ū, ǖ) indicate the high level
tone of
Mandarin Chinese
Mandarin ( ; zh, s=, t=, p=Guānhuà, l=Mandarin (bureaucrat), officials' speech) is the largest branch of the Sinitic languages. Mandarin varieties are spoken by 70 percent of all Chinese speakers over a large geographical area that stretch ...
. The alternative to the macron is the number 1 after the syllable (for example, tā = ta1).
* Similarly in the
Yale romanization of Cantonese, macrons over a, e, i, o, u, m, n (ā, ē, ī, ō, ū, m̄, n̄) indicate the high level
tone of
Cantonese
Cantonese is the traditional prestige variety of Yue Chinese, a Sinitic language belonging to the Sino-Tibetan language family. It originated in the city of Guangzhou (formerly known as Canton) and its surrounding Pearl River Delta. While th ...
. Like Mandarin, the alternative to the macron is the number 1 after the syllable (for example, tā = ta1).
* In
Pe̍h-ōe-jī romanization of
Hokkien
Hokkien ( , ) is a Varieties of Chinese, variety of the Southern Min group of Chinese language, Chinese languages. Native to and originating from the Minnan region in the southeastern part of Fujian in southeastern China, it is also referred ...
, macrons over a, e, i, m, n, o, o͘, u, (ā, ē, ī, m̄, n̄, ō, ō͘, ū) indicate the mid level
tone ("light departing" or 7th tone) of Hokkien.
Omission
Sometimes the macron marks an omitted ''n'' or ''m'', like the
tilde, in which context it is referred to as a "":
* In Old English texts a macron above a letter indicates the omission of an ''m'' or ''n'' that would normally follow that letter.
* In older handwriting such as the German
Kurrentschrift, the macron over an a-e-i-o-u or ä-ö-ü stood for an ''n'', or over an ''m'' or an ''n'' meant that the letter was doubled. This continued into print in English in the sixteenth century, and to some extent in German. Over a ''u'' at the end of a word, the macron indicated ''um'' as a form of
scribal abbreviation.
Letter extension
In
romanizations of Hebrew, the
macron below is typically used to mark the
begadkefat
Begadkefat (also begedkefet) is the phenomenon of lenition affecting the non-emphatic consonant, emphatic stop consonants of Biblical Hebrew and Aramaic when they are preceded by a vowel and not gemination, geminated. The name is also given to si ...
consonant
lenition. However, for typographical reasons a regular macron is used on ''p'' and ''g'' instead: ''p̄, ḡ''.
The macron is used in the orthography of a number of vernacular languages of the
Solomon Islands
Solomon Islands, also known simply as the Solomons,John Prados, ''Islands of Destiny'', Dutton Caliber, 2012, p,20 and passim is an island country consisting of six major islands and over 1000 smaller islands in Melanesia, part of Oceania, t ...
and
Vanuatu
Vanuatu ( or ; ), officially the Republic of Vanuatu (; ), is an island country in Melanesia located in the South Pacific Ocean. The archipelago, which is of volcanic origin, is east of northern Australia, northeast of New Caledonia, east o ...
, particularly those first transcribed by
Anglican missionaries. The macron has no unique value, and is simply used to distinguish between two different phonemes.
Thus, in several languages of the
Banks Islands, including
Mwotlap, the simple ''m'' stands for , but an ''m'' with a macron (m̄) is a
rounded labial-velar nasal ; while the simple ''n'' stands for the common
alveolar nasal , an ''n'' with macron (n̄) represents the
velar nasal ; the vowel ē stands for a (short) higher by contrast with plain ''e'' ; likewise ō contrasts with plain ''o'' .
In
Hiw orthography, the consonant ''r̄'' stands for the prestopped
velar lateral approximant .
In
Araki, the same symbol ''r̄'' encodes the
alveolar trill – by contrast with ''r'', which encodes the
alveolar flap
The voiced alveolar tap or flap is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet
The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is an alphabetic system of phonetic notation based pri ...
.
In
Bislama (orthography before 1995),
Lamenu and
Lewo, a macron is used on two letters '. ''m̄'' represents , and ''p̄'' represents . The orthography after 1995 (which has no diacritics) has these written as ''mw'' and ''pw''.
In
Kokota, ''ḡ'' is used for the
velar stop , but ''g'' without macron is the
voiced velar fricative
The voiced velar fricative is a type of consonantal sound that is used in various spoken languages. It is not found in most varieties of Modern English but existed in Old English. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents ...
.
In
Marshallese, a macron is used on four letters – ' – whose pronunciations differ from the unmarked '. Marshallese uses a
vertical vowel system with three to four vowel phonemes, but traditionally their allophones have been written out, so vowel letters with macron are used for some of these allophones. Though the standard diacritic involved is a macron, there are no other diacritics used ''above'' letters, so in practice other diacritics can and have been used in less polished writing or print, yielding nonstandard letters like ', depending on displayability of letters in
computer fonts.
* The letter ' is pronounced , the
palatalized allophone of the phoneme .
* The letter ' represents the
velar nasal phoneme and the
labialized velar nasal phoneme , depending on context. The standard letter does not exist as a
precombined glyph in
Unicode
Unicode or ''The Unicode Standard'' or TUS is a character encoding standard maintained by the Unicode Consortium designed to support the use of text in all of the world's writing systems that can be digitized. Version 16.0 defines 154,998 Char ...
, so the nonstandard variant ' is often used in its place.
* The letter ' is pronounced or , which are the
unrounded velarized allophones of the phonemes and respectively.
* The letter ' is pronounced , the unrounded velarized allophone of the phoneme .
In
Obolo, the simple n stands for the common
alveolar nasal , while an ''n'' with macron (n̄) represents the
velar nasal .
Other uses
* In older
German and in the German
Kurrent handwriting, as well as older
Danish, a macron is used on some consonants, especially n and m, as a short form for a double consonant (for example, ''n̄'' instead of ''nn'').
* In
Russian cursive, as well as in some others based on the
Cyrillic script
The Cyrillic script ( ) is a writing system used for various languages across Eurasia. It is the designated national script in various Slavic languages, Slavic, Turkic languages, Turkic, Mongolic languages, Mongolic, Uralic languages, Uralic, C ...
(for example,
Bulgarian), a lowercase ''
Т'' looks like a lowercase ''m'', and a macron is often used to distinguish it from ''
Ш'', which looks like a lowercase ''w'' (see ''
Т''). Some writers also underline the letter ''ш'' to reduce ambiguity further.
Also, in some instances, a diacritic will be written like a macron, although it represents another diacritic whose standard form is different:
* In some
Finnish,
Estonian and
Swedish handwriting, a macron-style umlaut is used for ''
ä'' or ''
ö'' (also ''
õ'' and ''
ü'' in Estonian), sometimes known colloquially as a "lazy man's umlaut". This can also be seen in some modern handwritten
German.
* In
Norwegian ''ū'', ''ā'', ''ī'', ''ē'' and ''ō'' can be used for decorative purposes both in handwritten and computed
Bokmål
Bokmål () (, ; ) is one of the official written standards for the Norwegian language, alongside Nynorsk. Bokmål is by far the most used written form of Norwegian today, as it is adopted by 85% to 90% of the population in Norway. There is no cou ...
and
Nynorsk
Nynorsk (; ) is one of the two official written standards of the Norwegian language, the other being Bokmål. From 12 May 1885, it became the state-sanctioned version of Ivar Aasen's standard Norwegian language (''Landsmål''), parallel to the Da ...
or to denote vowel length such as in ''dū'' (you), ''lā'' (infinitive form of to let), lēser (present form of "to read") and ''lūft'' (air). The diacritic is entirely optional, carries no IPA value and is seldom used in modern Norwegian outside of handwriting.
* In informal
Hungarian handwriting, a macron is often a substitute for either a
double acute accent or an
umlaut (e.g., ''
ö'' or ''
ő''). Because of this ambiguity, using it is often regarded as bad practice.
* In informal handwriting, the
Spanish ''ñ'' is sometimes written with a macron-shaped tilde: (''n̄'').
Medicine
Continuing previous
Latin
Latin ( or ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally spoken by the Latins (Italic tribe), Latins in Latium (now known as Lazio), the lower Tiber area aroun ...
scribal abbreviations, letters with combining macron can be used in various European languages to represent the
overline
An overline, overscore, or overbar, is a typographical feature of a horizontal and vertical, horizontal line drawn immediately above the text. In old mathematical notation, an overline was called a ''vinculum (symbol), vinculum'', a notation fo ...
s indicating various
medical abbreviations, particularly including:
* ā for ("before")
* c̄ for ("with")
* p̄ for ("after")
* q̄ for and its inflections ("every", "each")
* s̄ for ("without")
* x̄ for and its inflections ("except")
Note, however, that abbreviations involving the letter h take their macron halfway up the ascending line rather than at the normal height for unicode macrons and overlines:
ħ. This is separately encoded in
Unicode
Unicode or ''The Unicode Standard'' or TUS is a character encoding standard maintained by the Unicode Consortium designed to support the use of text in all of the world's writing systems that can be digitized. Version 16.0 defines 154,998 Char ...
with the symbols using
bar diacritics and appears shorter than other macrons in many fonts.
Mathematics and science
The
overline
An overline, overscore, or overbar, is a typographical feature of a horizontal and vertical, horizontal line drawn immediately above the text. In old mathematical notation, an overline was called a ''vinculum (symbol), vinculum'', a notation fo ...
is a typographical symbol similar to the macron, used in a number of ways in mathematics and science. For example, it is used to represent
complex conjugation:
and to represent a
line segment
In geometry, a line segment is a part of a line (mathematics), straight line that is bounded by two distinct endpoints (its extreme points), and contains every Point (geometry), point on the line that is between its endpoints. It is a special c ...
in geometry (e.g.,
),
sample means in statistics (e.g.,
) and
negation
In logic, negation, also called the logical not or logical complement, is an operation (mathematics), operation that takes a Proposition (mathematics), proposition P to another proposition "not P", written \neg P, \mathord P, P^\prime or \over ...
s in
logic
Logic is the study of correct reasoning. It includes both formal and informal logic. Formal logic is the study of deductively valid inferences or logical truths. It examines how conclusions follow from premises based on the structure o ...
. It is also used in
Hermann–Mauguin notation.
Music
In music, the
tenuto marking resembles the macron.
The macron is also used in German
lute
A lute ( or ) is any plucked string instrument with a neck (music), neck and a deep round back enclosing a hollow cavity, usually with a sound hole or opening in the body. It may be either fretted or unfretted.
More specifically, the term "lu ...
tablature to distinguish repeating alphabetic characters.
Letters with macron
Technical notes
The
Unicode Standard encodes
combining and
precomposed macron characters:
Macron-related Unicode characters not included in the table above:
* CJK
fullwidth variety:
**
*
Kazakhstani tenge
**
*
Overline
An overline, overscore, or overbar, is a typographical feature of a horizontal and vertical, horizontal line drawn immediately above the text. In old mathematical notation, an overline was called a ''vinculum (symbol), vinculum'', a notation fo ...
s
* Characters using a
macron below instead of above
*
Tone contour transcription characters incorporating a macron:
**
**
**
**
* Two intonation marks historically used by
Antanas Baranauskas for Lithuanian dialectology:
**
**
In
TeX
Tex, TeX, TEX, may refer to:
People and fictional characters
* Tex (nickname), a list of people and fictional characters with the nickname
* Tex Earnhardt (1930–2020), U.S. businessman
* Joe Tex (1933–1982), stage name of American soul singer ...
a macron is created with the command "\=", for example: M\=aori for Māori.
In
OpenOffice, if the extension Compose Special Characters is installed,
a macron may be added by following the letter with a hyphen and pressing the user's predefined shortcut key for composing special characters. A macron may also be added by following the letter with the character's four-digit hex-code, and pressing the user's predefined shortcut key for adding unicode characters.
See also
*
Macron below
*
Vinculum (symbol)
\overline
= 0.
\overline
Y = \overline
\sqrt
a-\overline = a − (b + c)
bracketing function
Vinculum usage
A vinculum () is a horizontal line used in mathematical notation for various purposes. It may be placed as an ''overline'' or ...
References
External links
Diacritics Project – All you need to design a font with correct accentsKupu o te RāHow to set up the keyboard to type macrons in various operating systems.
{{Latin alphabet, show diacritic =macron
Latin-script diacritics
Greek-script diacritics
Cyrillic-script diacritics
Poetic rhythm