Diacritics are markers added to letters. They can be above, below, or attached to a letter. In most languages and scripts using diacritics, these bring to the letter a different sound than that of the letter by itself.

LATIN ALPHABET

The Latin script is used in a large number of languages. Most of them use diacritics to bring (sometimes very subtle) variations of sound to letters. The quality of the sound of a diacritic can be different from one language to another. An example with the cedilla ç, used in French, Portuguese, and Turkish. Other languages even use multiple diacritics combined together with the same letter (like in Vietnamese with ở).

ARABIC SCRIPT

In the Arabic script, letters have different pronunciations depending on which diacritic is attached to them (or not there), and the language in use.

CHINESE PINYIN

In Mainland China during the 1950s, a new phonetic transcription system was created to make Chinese learning easier: Pinyin, which borrows Latin alphabet letters combined with diacritics as tone markers.

DESIGN

When creating a typeface, diacritics are designed as individual glyphs and are then combined with letters as components in type design applications. They need to be:

• visually aligned to the same height with one another (for those placed in the same area);
• have consistent weight and color;
• placed in a position with the letter that feels “natural” for each language.