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," distinguishing the noun from the verb "resume." Diacritics are more common in various European languages than they are in English

The following are some common diacritics:

• Áá — An acute accent is a symbol placed over a vowel in some languages, especially French and Italian.
• Àà — A grave accent is placed over a vowel in some languages, especially French and Italian.
• Ââ — A circumflex is placed over a vowel in some languages, especially French.
• Ää — A dieresis or umlaut, represented by two dots above the vowel, is used in various Germanic languages.
• Ññ — A tilde is used in Spanish and Portuguese.
• Åå and Øø — These symbols are used in Scandinavian writing.
• Çç — A cedilla is used in French.

Sounds unique to Eastern European languages were once written with two letter combination called "digraphs." In De Ortographia Bohemica (1412), Jan Hus proposed the use of diacritics in place of digraphs.

Eight-bit character encoding, introduced in the 1980s, allows dozens of characters with diacritics to be rendered on computer and transmitted electronically. Unicode, the current encoding standard, allows for an almost unlimited character set.

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 and encyclopedia 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 Guidance that suggests dropping off technically difficult diacritics may be disregarded as outdated.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	Zu·rich	Zu·rich	Zürich	Zürich	N/A	Zürich
Vietnamese towns
Ho Chi Minh City	Ho Chi Minh City Formerly Sai·gon	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	Ha·noi	Hanoi	Hanoi	Ha·noi	Hanoi	Hanoi	N/A	Hà Nội
Hai·phong	Hai·phong	Haiphong	Haiphong	Hai·phong	Haiphong	Haiphong	N/A	Hải Phòng
Hue	Hue	Hué	Hue	Hué	Hue	Hue	N/A	Huế

Electronic encoding

Eight characters with diacritics are included in International Morse Code: Ä, Á, Å, Ch (a Czech digraph), É, Ñ, Ö, and Ü. This encoding method, which includes only capital letters, was developed by Friedrich Clemens Gerke in 1848 and was adopted as an international standard in 1865.

Teleprinters used Baudot, a five-bit code developed in 1870 that includes only capital letters without diacritics. In the 1960s, Baudot was replaced by ASCII, a seven-bit code that includes both upper and lower cased letters. IBM introduced Extended ASCII, an eight-bit encoding standard, with the original PC in 1981. This set includes 37 characters with diacritics. Latin-1, a slightly revised version of the IBM character set, was adopted as an international standard in 1987.

Unicode, implemented by the Windows operating system since 2000, includes Latin-1 as well as a comprehensive collection of Nordic, Eastern European, and even Asian characters. Unicode characters can be up to four bytes long. This allows for over 1.1 million characters to be encoded, although only 113,000 codepoints have been assigned so far.

Latin-1

The following are Western European (Latin-1) diacritics:

• The acute accent: Áá, Éé, Íí, Óó, Úú.
• The grave accent: Àà, Èè, Ìì, Òò, Ùù.
• The circumflex: Ââ, Êê, Îî, Ôô, Ûû.
• The umlaut: Ää, Ëë, Ïï, Öö, Üü.
• The tilde: Ãã, Ññ.
• Scandinavian accents: Åå and Øø.
• The cedilla: Çç.

Latin-2

Latin-2 diacritics are used with Eastern European languages:

• Ąą Ęę Ţţ.
• The acute: Áá Ćć Éé Íí Ĺĺ Ńń Óó Ŕŕ Śś Úú Ýý Źź.
• The circumflex: Ââ Îî Ôô.
• The breve: Ăă Čč Ďď Ěě Ňň Řř Šš Ťť Žž.
• The umlaut: Ää Ëë Öö Üü.
• The cedilla: Çç Şş.
• The stroke: Đđ Łł.
• The double acute: Őő Űű.
• Ľľ
• Ůů
• Żż
• The s sharp: ẞß

Turkish is encoded as Latin-5, while the Nordic languages are encoded as Latin-6.

External links

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

American dictionaries

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

British dictionaries

• Collins Dictionary
• Oxford Dictionaries. Recommended by New Hart's Rules, the British equivalent to CMOS.

Encyclopedias

• Encyclopedia Britannica.
• Columbia Encyclopedia

Sports

• ESPN.com. ESPN Sports Almanac was a standard sports reference until it was discontinued in 2009. Much of the information that was formerly used for the almanac is available at this site.

Further Reading

• Chicago Manual of Style This is the best-known style guide. It is produced by the University of Chicago Press.
• Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary. CMOS gives this dictionary as its preferred spelling authority. The printed edition includes geography and biography sections not available in the free online version.
• Merriam-Webster's Geographical Dictionary (1997). Recommended by CMOS for the spelling of place names. Britannica presents geography in the same spelling style. In fact, the material on Britannica’s site is likely to be more carefully edited, more comprehensive, aend more up to date.
• Merriam-Webster's Biographical Dictionary (1995). Recommended by CMOS for the spelling of personal names. The comments above regarding Britannica and geographic names are even more applicable to biographical names. This book is no longer in print.
• National Geographic Atlas of the World. Recommended by AP.