Diacritic: meaning, definitions and examples

Used in a technical or academic context when discussing linguistic features in various languages. It includes all marks added to letters to change their sound values.

• The letter 'é' in French uses a diacritic to indicate a specific pronunciation.
• Diacritics are essential in many non-Latin scripts to convey correct meanings.

Commonly used in everyday conversation or non-technical contexts to refer to marks placed above or below letters to indicate stress or pronunciation changes.

• You need to add an accent mark to the 'e' in 'résumé' for correct spelling.
• In Spanish, the accent mark in 'habló' indicates past tense.

This term is typically used in linguistics and language studies to refer to any symbol added to a letter to alter its pronunciation or distinguish between similar words.

• In French, the acute accent is a diacritic that changes the pronunciation of the letter 'e'

This term is broader and includes any character that is not a standard letter or number, which can include diacritics, punctuation marks, symbols, etc. It is commonly used when discussing computer input or programming.

• Passwords often require at least one special character, such as an exclamation mark or an at symbol

This term is used when referring to letters that have specific accents (like acute, grave, or umlaut) added to them, often in everyday language or casual conversation.

• The word 'résumé' contains two accented characters that influence its pronunciation