Diacritics: The Squiggly Marks Above and Below a Letter

You've seen those funny looking punctuation-type symbols that appear above and below letters in a name or word---and you've always wondered what they were. Well, wonder no longer...they are diacritics.

Diacritics are the pronunciation marks that you see in dictionaries and are used in words/terms/names in text. These marks are guides to the different ways to pronounce a standard letter, and usually have to do with that letter's pronunciation in a foreign language, like the two dots over an o or u in German words (which is an umlaut [oohm-lout]).

When you need to use one of these symbols in a word/name, you should insert the letter that is already formatted with that symbol, rather than attempt to recreate it with some kind of fancy keyboard hocus-pocus.

To insert a letter with a diacritic, go to Insert (on your Word toolbar). Select Symbol. In the Font field, if "normal" does not appear, hit the down arrow and select "normal." In the Subset field, select Basic Latin. These two selections give you the very beginning of the symbol selection grid that appears below these two fields.

Scroll down through the grid to locate the combination of letter/diacritic that you need. You should find it in either Basic Latin or Latin-1, but if you don't see it immediately, just continue to scroll until you do.

When you find the letter/diacritic that you want, click on that letter and then click on Insert (a button below the grid). This will automatically insert that letter into your Word document (at the point where the cursor is placed in the text).

Once you have inserted a symbol into your document, if you need that same symbol again, you can simply copy it and paste it wherever you need it. If you are using a name/word repeatedly in the text, then copy the entire word (rather than just the letter) so that you can paste the word in wherever you need it.

There really are no "mysteries" to word pronunciation symbols and other punctuation marks---you just have to know what they are and where to find them when working in Word.

For a complete listing of diacritics, what they are, what they look like, what they are called, please visit:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diacritic

I suggest you bookmark this site and save it as a reference resource.

For more articles about writing and grammar, please visit Jan's Free Content, Grammar and Writing, at: http://freecontent.janktheproofer.com/#Grammar_and_Writing:.

Jan K., The Proofer is a freelance proofreader and copyeditor. Visit http://www.jansportal for more information about Jan’s proofreading and copyediting services and Jan's other free resources. Please visit Mom's Break (http://www.momsbreak.com/) for free printable crafts and projects. © Copyright 2005. All rights reserved.