Diacritic

An additional mark added to a basic letter.

Types of diacritical marks

• gravis
• acute
• circumflex
• macron
• diaresis or umlaut
• cedilla
• tilde
• bar through the basic letter
• spiritus asper
• spiritus lenis

Gravis, acute, circumflex, cedilla and diaresis are used in French. Diaresis is used in German and Spanish. Hebrew and Arabic use diacritica for denoting vowels (not in the list above).