Diaeresis (diacritic)

Ä	ä
Ǟ	ǟ
Ë	ë
Ḧ	ḧ
Ï	ï
Ḯ	ḯ
M̈	m̈
Ö	ö
Ȫ	ȫ
Ṏ	ṏ
P̈	p̈
T̈	ẗ
Ü	ü
Ǖ	ǖ
Ǘ	ǘ
Ǚ	ǚ
Ǜ	ǜ
Ṳ	ṳ
Ṻ	ṻ
V̈	v̈
Ẅ	ẅ
Ẍ	ẍ
Ÿ	ÿ

The diaeresis and the umlaut are diacritics that consist of two dots ( ¨ ) placed over a letter, most commonly a vowel. When that letter is an i or a j, the diacritic replaces the tittle: ï.^[1]

The diaeresis is used to denote the phonological phenomenon also known as diaeresis (pronounced /daɪˈɛrɨsɨs/ dy-err-ə-səs), in which a vowel letter is not part of a digraph or diphthong. The umlaut mark (pronounced /ˈʊmlaʊt/ uum-lowt) denotes a sound shift. The two uses originated separately, with the diaeresis being considerably older. In modern computer systems using Unicode, the umlaut and diaeresis diacritics are identical: ⟨ä⟩ represents both a-umlaut and a-diaeresis. Two dots are also used as a diacritic in other cases, where they are neither diaeresis nor umlaut.

Diaeresis

The diaeresis indicates that two adjoining letters that would normally form a digraph and be pronounced as one are instead to be read as separate, either as a diphthong or as two distinct vowels in two syllables. The diaeresis indicates that a vowel should be pronounced apart from the letter that precedes it. For example, in the spelling coöperate, the diaeresis reminds the reader that the word has four syllables co-op-er-ate, not three, *coop-er-ate. In English, this usage is becoming archaic.^[2] Nevertheless, it is still used by the U.S. magazine The New Yorker. However, languages such as Dutch, Catalan, French, and Spanish make regular use of the diaeresis. By extension, the diaeresis is also used to denote similar distinctions, such as marking the schwa ë in Albanian.

Umlaut

"Umlaut" refers to a historical sound shift in German. In German, the umlaut diacritic is found as ä, ö and ü. The name is used in some other languages that share these symbols with German or where the Latin spelling was introduced in the 19th century, replacing marks that had been used previously. The phonological phenomenon of umlaut occurred historically in English as well (man ~ men; full ~ fill; goose ~ geese) in a way cognately parallel with German, but English orthography does not write the sound shift using the umlaut diacritic. Instead, a different letter is used.

It is likely that the umlaut diacritic originated from German Kurrentschrift, kurrent script,^[3] in which the small letter "e" looks very different from typical forms in English and other cursive scripts. A Kurrent "e" is essentially a few zigzag diagonal strokes with two peaks of essentially-equal height. Considering that umlaut in German can instead be written with a small lower-case "e", placed above the vowel, this origin is quite likely.

Other

In the International Phonetic Alphabet, a double dot is used for a centralized vowel, a situation more similar to umlaut than to diaeresis. In other languages it is used for vowel length, nasalization, tone, and various other uses where diaeresis or umlaut was available typographically.

Etymologies

The word diaeresis is from Ancient Greek: διαίρεσις, meaning division, separation, distinction.^[4]

Umlaut is German for "around/changed" (um-) "sound" (Laut).

The word trema (plural tremas or tremata), a term occasionally used in classical scholarship, is from Ancient Greek: τρῆμα, meaning a perforation, orifice, or pip (as on dice),^[5] and is derived from the form of the diacritic rather than its function.

Diaeresis

The diaeresis mark is far older than the umlaut mark, which assumed its present form after the invention of printing.

History

Two dots, called a trema, were used in the Hellenistic period on the letters ι and υ, most often at the beginning of a word, as in ϊδων, ϋιος, and ϋβριν, to separate them from a preceding vowel, as writing was scriptio continua, where spacing was not yet used as a word divider. (See Coptic alphabet, for example.) However, it was also used to indicate that a vowel formed its own syllable (in phonological hiatus), as in ηϋ and Αϊδι.^[6][7] In Modern Greek, αϊ and οϊ represent the diphthongs /ai̯/ and /oi̯/, and εϊ the disyllabic sequence /e.i/, whereas αι, οι, and ει transcribe the simple vowels /e/, /i/, and /i/. The diacritic can be the only one on a vowel, as in ακαδημαϊκός akadêmaïkos "academic", or in combination with an acute accent, as in πρωτεΐνη prôteïnê "protein").

The diaeresis was borrowed for this purpose in several languages of western and southern Europe, among them Occitan, Catalan, French, Dutch, Welsh, and increasingly uncommonly in English.

When a vowel in Greek was stressed, it did not assimilate to a preceding vowel but remained as a separate syllable. Such vowels were marked with an accent such as the acute, a tradition that has also been adopted by other languages, such as Spanish and Portuguese. For example, the Portuguese words saia [ˈsajɐ] "skirt" and the imperfect saía [saˈi.ɐ] "I used to leave" differ in that the sequence /ai/ forms a diphthong in the former (synaeresis), but is a hiatus in the latter (diaeresis).

Use for hiatus

In Catalan, the digraphs ai, ei, oi, au, eu, and iu are normally read as diphthongs. To indicate exceptions to this rule (hiatus), a diaeresis mark is placed on the second vowel: without this the words raïm [rəˈim] ("grape") and diürn [diˈurn] ("diurnal") would be read [ˈrajm]* and [ˈdiwrn]*, respectively. The Occitan use of diaeresis is very similar to Catalan: ai, ei, oi, au, eu, ou are diphthongs consisting of one syllable but aï, eï, oï, aü, eü, oü are groups consisting of two distinct syllables.

In Welsh, where the diaeresis appears, it is usually on the stressed vowel, and this is most often on the first of the two adjacent vowels; a typical example is copïo [kɔ.ˈpi.ɔ] (to copy), cf. mopio [ˈmɔ.pjɔ] (to mop).

Another example is the Dutch spelling coëfficiënt, necessary because the digraphs oe and ie normally represent the simple vowels [u] and [i], respectively. However, for compound words hyphenation is now preferred, so zeeëend (seaduck) is now spelled zee-eend.^[8] (Handwritten ij can resemble a ÿ, though this letter does not exist in Dutch.) In German, diaeresis occurs in a few proper names, such as Piëch and Bernhard Hoëcker.

Use for non-silent vowels

As a further extension, some languages began to use a diaeresis whenever a vowel letter was to be pronounced separately. This included vowels that would otherwise form digraphs with consonants or simply be silent.

In the orthographies of Spanish, Catalan, French, Galician and Occitan, the graphemes gu, and qu normally represent a single sound, [ɡ] or [k], before the front vowels e and i (or before nearly all vowels in Occitan). In the few exceptions where the u is pronounced, a diaeresis is added to it. Before the 1990 Orthographic Agreement, a diaeresis was also used in Portuguese in this manner, in words like sangüíneo [sɐ̃ⁿ'ɡwinjʊ] “sanguineous”. In French, in such cases the diaeresis is usually written over the following vowel.

Examples:

• Spanish vergüenza [beɾˈɣwenθa] "shame"
• Catalan aigües [ˈajɣwəs] / [ˈajɣwes] "waters", qüestió [kwəstiˈo] / [kwestiˈo] "matter/question"
• Occitan lingüista (linguist), aqüatic (aquatic)
• French aiguë or aigüe [eɡy] "acute (fem.)" [note that the e is silent; without the diacritic, both it and the u would be silent]
• Luxembourgish Chance "opportunity", Chancë [before a consonant] "opportunities"
• English Brontë /ˈbrɒntiː/ (see Brontë family)

This has been extended to Ganda, where a diaeresis separates y from n: anya [aɲa], anÿa [aɲja].

French

In French, some diphthongs that were written with pairs of vowel letters were later reduced to monophthongs, which led to an extension of the value of this diacritic. It often now indicates that the second vowel letter is to be pronounced separately from the first, rather than merge with it into a single sound. For example, the French words païen [pajɛ̃], maïs [ma.is], and naïve [na.iv] would be pronounced *[pe.ɑ̃], *[mɛ], and *[nɛv], respectively, without the diaeresis mark, since the digraph ai is pronounced [e]. The English spelling of Noël "Christmas" (French [nɔ.ɛl]) comes from this use. Ÿ occurs in French as a variant of ï in a few proper nouns, as in the name of the Parisian suburb of L'Haÿ-les-Roses [la.i le ʁoz].

The diaeresis is also used when a silent e is added to the sequence gu, to show that it is to be pronounced [ɡy] rather than as a digraph for [ɡ]. For example, when the feminine -e is added to aigu [eɡy] "sharp", the pronunciation does not change: aiguë [eɡy]. Similar is the feminine noun ciguë [siɡy] "hemlock"; compare figue [fiɡ] "fig". In the ongoing French spelling reform of 1990, this was moved to the u (aigüe, cigüe), though the earlier orthography continues to be widely used. (In canoë [kanɔ.e] the e is not silent, and so is not affected by the spelling reform.)

In some names, a diaeresis is used to show what used to be two vowels in hiatus, although the second vowel has since fallen silent, as in Saint-Saëns [sɛ̃sɑ̃s] and de Staël [də stal].

English

The diaeresis mark is used in English to indicate where two adjacent vowels should be pronounced separately, rather than as a diphthong. English words of Latin origin such as zoölogy and reënact, as well as to native words such as seër, are sometimes written with a diaeresis. It remains fairly commonly used in certain names, such as the surname Brontë, and the given names Chloë and Zoë (which otherwise might be pronounced with a silent e), and for words that do not have a morphological break at the diaeresis point, such as naïve, Boötes, and Noël. However its use in words such as coöperate and reënter has been dropped or replaced by the use of a hyphen except in a very few publications—notably The New Yorker.^[9][10]

Ÿ is sometimes used in transcribed Greek, where it represents the Greek letter υ (upsilon) in hiatus with α. For example, it can be seen in the transcription Artaÿctes of the Persian name Ἀρταΰκτης at the very end of Herodotus. Or the name of Mount Taÿgetus on the southern Peloponnesus peninsula, which in modern Greek is spelled Ταΰγετος.

Umlaut

History

Further information: Germanic umlaut

New and old forms of umlaut

Historically, the umlaut mark is far younger than the diaeresis mark, and has unrelated origins, though it has been speculated that an awareness of diaeresis might have influenced the final written form of the umlaut.

Development of the umlaut in Sütterlin: schoen becomes schön via schoͤn (“beautiful”)

Originally, phonological umlaut was denoted in written German by adding an e to the affected vowel, either after the vowel or, in small form, above it. (In medieval German manuscripts, other digraphs could also be written using superscripts: in bluome (“flower”), for example, the <o> was frequently placed above the <u>, although this letter survives now only in Czech. Compare also the development of the tilde as a superscript ‘n’.) In blackletter handwriting as used in German manuscripts of the later Middle Ages, and also in many printed texts of the early modern period, the superscript <e> still had a form that would be recognisable to us as an <e>. However, in the forms of handwriting that emerged in the early modern period (of which Sütterlin is the latest and best-known example), the letter <e> had two strong vertical lines, and the superscript <e> looked like two tiny strokes. Gradually these strokes were reduced to dots, and as early as the 16th century we find this handwritten convention being transferred sporadically to printed texts too.

In modern handwriting, the umlaut sometimes looks like a tilde, quotation mark, dash, or other small mark.

Printing conventions in German

When typing German, if umlaut letters are not available, the proper way is to replace them with the underlying vowel and a following <e>. So, for example, "Schröder" becomes "Schroeder". As the pronunciation differs greatly between the normal letter and the umlaut, simply omitting the dots is considered incorrect. The result might often be a different word, as in schon 'already', schön 'beautiful', schwul 'gay', schwül 'humid' or Mutter 'mother', Mütter 'mothers'.

Despite this, the umlauted letters are not considered part of the alphabet proper. When alphabetically sorting German words, the umlaut is usually treated like the underlying vowel; if two words differ only by an umlaut, the umlauted one comes second – the same treatment as the dakuten diacritic in Japanese, for instance – for example:

1. Schon
2. Schön
3. Schonen

There is a second system in limited use, mostly for sorting names (colloquially called "telephone directory sorting"), which treats ü like ue, and so on.

1. Schön
2. Schon
3. Schonen

Austrian telephone directories insert ö after oz.

1. Schon
2. Schonen
3. Schön

In Switzerland, capital umlauts are sometimes printed as digraphs, in other words, <Ae>, <Oe>, <Ue>, instead of <Ä>, <Ö>, <Ü> (see German alphabet for an elaboration.) This is because the Swiss keyboard contains the French accents on the same keys as the umlauts (selected by Shift). To write capital umlauts the ¨-key is pressed followed by the capital letter to which the umlaut should apply.

Borrowing of German umlaut notation

Some languages have borrowed some of the forms of the German letters Ä, Ö, or Ü, including Estonian, Finnish, Hungarian, Karelian, some of the Sami languages, Slovak, Swedish^{[citation needed]}, and Turkish. With the exception of Swedish, use of the diacritic in these languages does not relate to instances of the historical phenomenon of Germanic umlaut, but it often indicates sounds similar to those for which it is used in German. In Hungarian, where long vowels are indicated with an acute accent, the umlaut notation has been expanded with a version of the umlaut which looks like double acute accents, indicating a blend of umlaut and acute. Contrast: short ö, ü; long ő, ű.

The Estonian alphabet has borrowed ⟨ä⟩, ⟨ö⟩, and ⟨ü⟩ from German; Swedish and Finnish have ⟨ä⟩ and ⟨ö⟩; and Slovak has ⟨ä⟩. In Estonian, Swedish, Finnish, and Sami ⟨ä⟩ and ⟨ö⟩ denote [æ] and [ø], respectively. Hungarian has ⟨ö⟩ and ⟨ü⟩. The Slovak language uses the letter ⟨ä⟩ to denote [ɛ] (or a bit archaic but still correct [æ]) – the sign is called dve bodky ("two dots"), and the full name of the letter ä is a s dvomi bodkami ("a with two dots"). In these languages, with the exception of Hungarian, the replacement rule for situations where the umlaut character is not available, is to simply use the underlying unaccented character instead. Hungarian follows the German rules and replaces ⟨ö⟩ and ⟨ü⟩ with ⟨oe⟩ and ⟨ue⟩ respectively – at least for telegrams and telex messages. The same rule is followed for the near-lookalikes ⟨ő⟩ and ⟨ű⟩.

In Luxembourgish (Lëtzebuergesch), the umlaut diacritic in ⟨ä⟩ and ⟨ë⟩ represents a stressed schwa. Since the Luxembourgish language uses the mark to show stress, it cannot be used to modify the u, which therefore has to be ⟨ue⟩.

When Turkish switched from the Arabic to the Latin alphabet in 1928, it adopted a number of diacritics borrowed from various languages, including <ü>, which was taken from German (Turkey had a close relationship with Germany) and <ö> from Swedish, which in turn had borrowed this symbol from German. These Turkish graphemes represent similar sounds to their values in German (see Turkish alphabet).

As the borrowed diacritic has lost its relationship to Germanic i-mutation, they are in some languages considered independent graphemes, and cannot be replaced with <ae>, <oe>, or <ue> as in German. In Estonian and Finnish, for example, these latter diphthongs have independent meanings. Even some Germanic languages, such as Swedish (which does have a transformation analogous to the German umlaut, called omljud), treat them as independent letters. In collation, this means they have their own positions in the alphabet, for example at the end ("A–Ö" or "A–Ü", not "A–Z") as in Swedish, Estonian and Finnish, which means that the dictionary order is different from German. The transformations ä → ae and ö → oe can therefore be considered less appropriate for these languages, although Swedish passports use the transformation to render ö and ä (and å as aa) in the machine-readable zone.

When typing in Norwegian, the letters Æ and Ø might be replaced with Ä and Ö respectively if the former are not available. If ä is not available either, it is appropriate to use ae. The same goes for ö and oe. While ae has a great resemblance to the letter æ and therefore does not impede legibility, the digraph oe is likely to reduce the legibility of a Norwegian text. This especially applies to the digraph øy, which would be rendered in the more cryptic form oey.

Early Volapük used Fraktur a, o and u as different than Antiqua ones. Later, the Fraktur forms were replaced with umlauted vowels.

The usage of umlaut-like diacritic vowels, particularly ü, occurs in the transcription of languages that do not use the Roman alphabet, such as Chinese. For example, 女 (female) is transcribed as nü in proper Mandarin Chinese pinyin, while nv is sometimes used as a replacement for convenience since the letter v is not used in pinyin. Tibetan pinyin uses ä, ö, ü with approximately their German values.

The Cyrillic letters ӓ, ӧ, ӱ are used in Mari, Khanty, and other languages for approximately [æ], [ø], and [y]. These directly parallel the German umlaut ä, ö, ü. Other vowels using a double dot to modify their values in various minority languages of Russia are ӛ, ӫ, and ӹ.

Use of the umlaut for special effect

See also: Metal umlaut

The umlaut diacritic can be used in "sensational spellings" or foreign branding, for example in advertising, or for other special effects. Häagen-Dazs is an example of such usage.

As the German short /a/ is more open than the equivalent sound in English (/æ/), Germans sometimes use the diacritic <ä> to imitate the English sound in writing, giving an English (chiefly American MTV style English) "feel" to words used in advertising; in a McDonald's restaurant in Germany one could buy a "Big Mäc" (McDonald's renamed Fishmäc and Big Mäc in 2007).

Since the letter ü is very common in Turkish, its inappropriate use can make a text in another language look "turkified", a purely visual mimicry. Because of the large number of Turks living in Germany, this again is a phenomenon familiar in German. The Turkish-German satirist Osman Engin, for example, wrote a book entitled Dütschlünd, Dütschlünd übür üllüs – the opening line of the first stanza from Das Lied der Deutschen, but turkified.

In the heavy metal scene, the umlaut diacritic can frequently be observed as a mere decoration (with no significance for the pronunciation) on the names of bands such as Blue Öyster Cult, Motörhead, Mötley Crüe, Mägo de Oz, Queensrÿche, or Leftöver Crack. The group Spın̈al Tap places an umlaut over the <n>. A self-referential example is the Finnish group Ümlaut.

Jason Derülo is proof that even R&B artists are not immune to this type of usage.

Other uses

A double dot is also used as a diacritic in cases where it functions as neither a diaeresis nor an umlaut.

On vowels

• In Albanian and Kashubian, 'ë' represents a schwa (ə).

• In Aymara, a double dot is used on ä ï ü for vowel length. This is sometimes seen instead of the macron for Maori as well: Māori or Mäori.

• In Seneca, ë ö are nasal vowels, though ä is [ɛ], as in German umlaut.

• In Vurës (Vanuatu), ë ö encode respectively [œ] and [ø].

• In the Pahawh Hmong script, a double dot is used as one of several tone marks.

• The double dot was used in the early Cyrillic alphabet, which was used to write Old Church Slavonic. The modern Cyrillic Belarusian and Russian alphabets include the letter yo (Ё, ё), although in modern Russian it is usually printed without the diacritic (Е, е) unless doing so would create ambiguity. Since the 1870s, the letter yi (Ї, ї) has been used in the Ukrainian alphabet for palatalized [ji]; plain і is unpalatalized [i]. In Udmurt, ӥ is used for unpalatalized [i], with и for palatalized [ji].

On consonants

Jacaltec (a Mayan language) and Malagasy are among the very few languages with a diaeresis on the letter "n"; in both, n̈ is the velar nasal [ŋ].

In Udmurt, a double dot is also used with the consonant letters ӝ [dʒ] (from ж [ʒ]) and ӟ [dʑ] (from з [z] ~ [ʑ]).

Ḧ and ẍ are used for [ħ] and [ʁ] in the unified Kurdish alphabet. These are foreign sounds borrowed from Arabic.

Ẅ and ÿ: Ÿ is generally a vowel, but it's used as the (semi-vowel) consonant [ɰ] (a [w] without the use of the lips) in Tlingit. This sound is also found in Coast Tsimshian, where it's written ẅ.

A number of languages in Vanuatu use double dots on consonants, to represent linguolabial (or apicolabial) phonemes in their orthography. Thus Araki contrasts bilabial p [p] with linguolabial p̈ [t̼]; bilabial m [m] with linguolabial m̈ [n̼]; and bilabial v [β] with linguolabial v̈ [ð̼].

The letter ẗ is not used in any alphabet, but is sometimes seen for tāʾ marbūṭa ة in Arabic transliteration.

In calculus

The derivative with respect to time (using Newton's notation) is often represented as a dot above a variable. Two dots represents the second derivative.

${\dot{a}} = {\mathrm{d}a \over \mathrm{d}t}$

${\ddot{a}} = {\mathrm{d} ^2 a \over \mathrm{d} t^2}$

This may be contrasted with the more general notation for a derivative using a prime, which may also be used to refer specifically to the derivative with respect to space:

$f'(x) = {\mathrm{d} \over \mathrm{d}x} f(x)$

$f''(x) = {\mathrm{d}^2 \over \mathrm{d} x^2} f(x)$

Computer usage

Character encoding generally treats the umlaut and the diaeresis as the same diacritic mark.

Keyboard input

Letters with umlaut on a German computer keyboard.

Using Microsoft Word for Windows, a letter with double dots can be produced by pressing Ctrl-Shift-:, then the letter.

Using an English keyboard with Mac OS, a letter with double dots can be produced by pressing Option-U, then the letter.

X-based systems with a Compose key set in the system, can usually insert characters with double dots by typing Compose-Shift-" , followed by the letter.

Microsoft Windows allows users to set their US layout keyboard language to International, which allows for something similar, by turning keys (rather characters) into dead keys. If the user enters ", nothing will appear on screen, until the user types another character, after which the characters will be merged if possible, or added independently at once if not.

On several operating systems, double-dotted letters can be written by entering Alt codes. On Microsoft Windows keyboard layouts that do not have double dotted characters, one can especially use Windows Alt keycodes. Double dots are then entered by pressing the left Alt key, and entering the full decimal value of the character's position in the Windows code page on the numeric keypad, provided that the compatible code page is used as a system code page. You can also use numbers from Code page 850; these lack a leading 0.

Character	Windows Code Page Code	CP850 Code
ä	Alt+0228	Alt+132
ë	Alt+0235	Alt+137
ï	Alt+0239	Alt+139
ö	Alt+0246	Alt+148
ü	Alt+0252	Alt+129
ÿ	Alt+0255	Alt+152
Ä	Alt+0196	Alt+142
Ë	Alt+0203	Alt+211
Ï	Alt+0207, Alt+02255	Alt+651
Ö	Alt+0214	Alt+153
Ü	Alt+0220	Alt+154
Ÿ	Alt+0159	N/A

Character encodings

The ISO 8859-1 character encoding includes the letters ä, ë, ï, ö, ü, and their respective capital forms, as well as ÿ in lower case only, with Ÿ added in the revised edition ISO 8859-15.

Unicode provides the double dot as a combining character U+0308. Mainly for compatibility with older character encodings, dozens of codepoints with letters with double dots are available.

Both the combining character U+0308 and the precombined codepoints can be used as umlaut or diaeresis.

Sometimes, there's a need to distinguish between the umlaut sign and the diaeresis sign. In these cases, the following recommendation by ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 2/WG 2 should be followed:

• To represent the umlaut use Combining Diaeresis (U+0308)
• To represent the diaeresis use Combining Grapheme Joiner (CGJ, U+034F) + Combining Diaeresis (U+0308)

HTML

In HTML, vowels with double dots can be entered with an entity reference of the form &?uml;, where ? can be any of a, e, i, o, u, y or their majuscule counterparts. With the exception of the uppercase Ÿ, these characters are also available in all of the ISO 8859 character sets and thus have the same codepoints in ISO-8859-1 (-2, -3, -4, -9, -10, -13, -14, -15, -16) and Unicode. The uppercase Ÿ is available in ISO 8859-15 and Unicode, and Unicode provides a number of other letters with double dots as well.

Umlauts

Character	Replacement	HTML	Unicode
ä	a or ae	ä	U+00E4
ö	o or oe	ö	U+00F6
ü	u or ue	ü	U+00FC
Ä	A or Ae	Ä	U+00C4
Ö	O or Oe	Ö	U+00D6
Ü	U or Ue	Ü	U+00DC

Other double dots

Character	HTML	Unicode
ë	ë	U+00EB
ḧ		U+1E27
ï	ï	U+00EF
ẅ		U+1E85
ẍ		U+1E8D
ÿ	ÿ	U+00FF
Ë	Ë	U+00CB
Ḧ		U+1E26
Ï	Ï	U+00CF
Ẅ		U+1E84
Ẍ		U+1E8C
Ÿ	Ÿ	U+0178

Note: when replacing umlaut characters with plain ASCII, use ae, oe, etc. for German language, and the simple character replacements for all other languages.

TeX

TeX also allows double dots to be placed over letters in math mode, using "\ddot{}", or outside of math mode, with the \" control sequence:

$\mathrm{\ddot{a}\ddot{b}\ddot{c}\ddot{d}\ddot{e}\ddot{A}\ddot{B}\ddot{C}\ddot{D}\ddot{E}}$

However, this will produce double dots that are too far above the letter's body for good typographical umlauts. TeX's "German" package should be used if possible: It adds the " control sequence (without backslash), which gives umlauts.

See also

• Diaeresis
• Umlaut
• Alt code
• Dot (diacritic)
• Double acute accent, a similar-looking diacritic
• Metal umlaut
• Macron
• Tittle

The ISO basic Latin alphabetv · d · e
Aa	Bb	Cc	Dd	Ee	Ff	Gg	Hh	Ii	Jj	Kk	Ll	Mm	Nn	Oo	Pp	Qq	Rr	Ss	Tt	Uu	Vv	Ww	Xx	Yy	Zz
Letters using umlaut or diaeresis sign ( ◌̈ )
Ää	Ëë	Ḧḧ	Ï ï	N̈n̈	Öö	T̈ẗ	Üü	Ẅẅ	Ẍẍ	Ÿÿ
Related
History Palaeography Derivations Diacritics Punctuation Numerals Unicode List of letters ISO/IEC 646

References

1. ^ The Unicode Standard v 5.0. San Francisco, etc.: Addison-Wesley. 1991-2007. pp. 228. ISBN 0-321-48091-0. 
2. ^ Harry Shaw, 1964. Punctuate It Right. p. 43, Accent Marks: Dieresis: "...it is much less used than formerly, having been largely replaced by the hyphen..."
3. ^ File:Deutsche Kurrentschrift.svg
4. ^ διαίρεσις. Liddell, Henry George; Scott, Robert; A Greek–English Lexicon at Perseus Project
5. ^ τρῆμα. Liddell, Henry George; Scott, Robert; A Greek–English Lexicon at Perseus Project
6. ^ William Johnson, 2004. Bookrolls and scribes in Oxyrhynchus, p 343; examples on pp 259, 315, 334, etc.
7. ^ Roger Bagnall, 2009:262. The Oxford handbook of papyrology
8. ^ Translation Services USA
9. ^ diaeresis: December 9, 1998. The Mavens' Word of the Day. Random House.
10. ^ Umlauts in English?. General Questions. Straight Dope Message Board.

External links

• Diacritics Project – All you need to design a font with correct accents
• Keyboard Help – Learn how to create world language accent marks and other diacriticals on a computer