Diacritic

A diacritic is a mark near or through a character that changes its phonetic value or significance. For example, diacritics appear above the letter "e" in the word "résumé." Diacritics are more common in various European languages than they are in English.

These are examples of common diacritics:

• Acute accent (é) - The acute accent is a symbol placed over a vowel in some languages, especially French and Italian.
• Circumflex (^) - An accent placed over a vowel in some languages, especially French and Afrikaans.
• Grave accent (è) - An accent placed over a vowel in some languages, especially French, Italian and Vietnamese.
• Umlaut (or trema) (ü) - An accent, represented by two dots above the vowel, used in some languages, especially German and Afrikaans and Nordic languages like Swedish and Finnish.

Eight upper case characters with diacritics are included in International Morse Code: Ä, Á, Å, Ch, É, Ñ, Ö, and Ü. This system also includes the twenty six characters of the Latin alphabet, ten numerals, and punctuation. It was developed by Friedrich Clemens Gerke in 1848 and was adopted as an international standard in 1865. Extended ASCII, an eight-bit encoding standard introduced in 1981 with the IBM PC, has 37 characters with diacritics, both upper case and lower case. "Latin-1," a slightly revised version of this standard, is still used in Western European typography. Unicode UTF-16, implemented by the Windows operating system since 2000, also includes Nordic, Eastern European, and Vietnamese diacritics.

Correct usage

All the major style guides advise the writer to select a widely available reference work and to follow the spellings given in this work. Modern computer software allows dictionary spellings to be reproduced exactly. Guidance that suggests dropping off technically difficult diacritics may be disregarded as outdated. Better known names, for example "Istanbul" or "Zurich," are often spelled without diacritics in English even though diacritics are part of the local language spelling. Lesser known names are generally spelled in the manner of the original language. Diacritics are not normally used for sports figures or for Vietnamese names. These are just rules of thumb, and each case should be checked separately in an appropriate reference work.

Merriam-Webster	American Heritage	Oxford	Webster’s New World	Random House	Encyclopedias
					Britannica	Columbia
Be·neš, Edvard	Be·neš, Eduard	Beneš, Edvard	Beneš, Edvard	Be·neš, Ed·u·ard	Edvard Beneš	Eduard Beneš
Koś·ciusz·ko, Tadeusz Andrzei Bonawentura	Kos·ci·uśz·ko or Kos·ci·us·ko, Thaddeus	Kosciusko, Thaddeus	Kosciusko, Thaddeus	Kos·ci·us·ko, Thaddeus	Tadeusz Kościuszko	Thaddeus Kosciusko
Mit·ter·rand, François (-Maurice)	Mit·ter·rand, François Maurice	Mitterrand, François	Mitterrand, François (Maurice)	Mit·ter·rand, Fran·çois (Mau·rice Ma·rie)	François Mitterrand	François Maurice Mitterrand
Tō·jō Hideki	To·jo, Hideki	Tojo, Hideki	Tojo, Hideki	To·jo, Hi·de·ki	Tōjō Hideki	Tōjō Hideki
Vö·rös·marty, Mihály	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	Mihály Vörösmarty	Mihály Vörösmarty
Wa·łe·sa [sic.], Lech	Wa·łę·sa, Lech	Wałęsa, Lech	Wałęsa, Lech	Wa·łę·sa, Lech	Lech Wałęsa	Lech Wałęsa

The U.S. Board on Geographic Names sets U.S. government usage in geography. The “conventional” name is the name BGN deems suitable for English language usage. The “approved” name is the official name in the local language.

Merriam-Webster	American Heritage	Oxford	Webster’s New World	Random House	Encyclopedias		U.S. Board on Geographic Names
					Britannica	Columbia	Conventional	Approved
Is·tan·bul	Is·tan·bul	Istanbul	Istanbul	Is·tan·bul	Istanbul	Istanbul	N/A	İstanbul
Jy·vas·ky·la	N/A	Jyväskylä	N/A	Jy·väs·ky·lä	Jyväskylä	Jyväskylä	N/A	Jyväskylä
Lü·beck	Lü·beck	Lübeck	Lü·beck	Lü·beck	Lübeck	Lübeck	N/A	Lübeck
Plo·iesti or Plo·esti	Plo·ieş·ti or Plo·eş·ti	Ploieşti	Plo·ieş•ti or Plo·eş·ti'	Plo·eş·ti	Ploieşti	Ploieşti	N/A	Ploiești
Zu·rich	Zu·rich	Zurich	Zurich	Zu·rich	Zürich	Zürich	N/A	Zürich
Vietnamese towns
Ho Chi Minh City	Ho Chi Minh City Formerly Saigon	Ho Chi Minh City	Ho Chi Minh City	Ho Chi Minh City	Ho Chi Minh City	Ho Chi Minh City	Ho Chi Minh City	Thành Phố Hồ Chí Minh
Ha·noi	Hanoi	Hanoi	Hanoi	Ha·noi	Hanoi	Hanoi	N/A	Hà Nội
Hai·phong	Haiphong	Haiphong	Haiphong	Hai·phong	Haiphong	Haiphong	N/A	Hải Phòng
Hue	Hue	Hué	Hue	Hué	Hue	Hue	N/A	Huế

External links

The following references may be consulted to determine proper spelling, including the correct use of diacritics:

American dictionaries

• American Heritage. Recommended by The Chicago Manual of Style and the Modern Language Association.
• Merriam-Webster Dictionary. This is dictionary is abridged from Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary, which is recommended by CMOS, MLA, and the American Psychological Association.
• Random House. Recommended by CMOS and MLA.
• Webster's New World College Dictionary. Recommended by the Associated Press.

British dictionaries

• Collins Dictionary
• Oxford Dictionaries. Recommended by The Oxford Style Manual.

Encyclopedias

• Encyclopedia Britannica.
• Columbia Encyclopedia

Sports

• ESPN

Further Reading

• The Merriam-Webster Geographic Dictionary. Recommended by CMOS.
• National Geographic Atlas of the World. Recommended by AP.