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Is there a term that covers grave and acute accents, umlauts, cedillas, tildes and all other characters that can be added to normal letters.

I have come across the word diacritics. But this seems to include things like commas and apostrophes.

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It's the first link on 3 of those wiki pages. – z7sg Ѫ Nov 16 '11 at 12:31
@z7sgѪ Heh, I didn't look at the links. In that case, it probably is general reference, you're right. – onomatomaniak Nov 16 '11 at 12:34
Four of those five Wikipedia pages are in the category Alphabetic diacritics (see bottom of the page). The fifth is a disambiguation page, but the intended page is also in Alphabetic diacritics. – Hugo Nov 16 '11 at 12:43
I did see the word "diacritic", but I had understood it to include commas, etc. So I thought it was not the correct level of abstraction. Thanks to onomatomaniak for explaining. – Urbycoz Nov 16 '11 at 12:47

closed as general reference by z7sg Ѫ, Jasper Loy, Hugo, Mitch, Mr. Shiny and New 安宇 Nov 16 '11 at 14:55

This question is too basic; it can be definitively and permanently answered by a single link to a standard internet reference source designed specifically to find that type of information. See the FAQ for guidance on how to improve it.

1 Answer

up vote 7 down vote accepted

I believe the term you're looking for is diacritic.

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It seems that a diacritic also includes "apostrophes", "commas", etc. I'm only interested in characters that can be added to normal letters. – Urbycoz Nov 16 '11 at 12:38
Commas are not diacritical in English. See: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comma#Diacritical_usage. (Apostrophes aren't either; they're diacritical in languages whose scripts use them in the form of an "accent", not a punctuation mark.) – onomatomaniak Nov 16 '11 at 12:41
Adding a comma to individual letters- how weird! Oh ok, well I guess it works then. Thanks! – Urbycoz Nov 16 '11 at 12:44
No problem. (Though I imagine this question will be closed in any case as general reference.) – onomatomaniak Nov 16 '11 at 12:46
It's looking that way. Unfairly in my opinion. You have to know the word already to know what to look for. Ho hum! – Urbycoz Nov 16 '11 at 13:43
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