Diacritics are small marks added above or below letters to change pronunciation, such as accents and cedillas.

The longer version

A small mark above or below a letter tells the reader to pronounce it differently, or to hear a separate syllable where one vowel would otherwise blend into the next. The acute accent can mark stress or a changed vowel quality, the cedilla softens a hard consonant, and the diaeresis splits two vowels apart.

English largely shed such marks as spelling settled, which is why loanwords arrive looking bare: facade often loses its hook and naive its dots, while cliche and passe keep theirs inconsistently. Languages that treat the marks as part of the alphabet resist dropping them, since removing one can turn a word into a different word.

Where this entry sits

This category gathers small surprises about the English language, from odd spelling rules to words that quietly hide their own history. Expect palindromes, punctuation oddities, borrowed terms, and the strange ways writing systems record spoken speech. The full list sits on the Words and Language page, where every entry is listed in order.