Kenneth G. Wilson (1923–). The Columbia Guide to Standard American English. 1993.
DIACRITICS, DIACRITICAL MARKS
Spelling, punctuation, and context cannot always give us all we need to pronounce and in other ways distinguish one word from another. Sometimes we need the help of diacritical marks or diacritics. Dictionary entries use diacritical marks and other special symbols to indicate how to pronounce words. For example, Webster’s New World Dictionary of American English (1988) uses diacritics to help distinguish the verb resume (ri zm’, zym’) from the noun résumé ('rez’--m’, ra’z -; r’z m’); the macrons, single and double, indicate vowel length (, ) and in the entry word résumé (noun, meaning “summary”), that dictionary retains two acute accents, again indicating the quality of the vowels so marked. Other diacritical marks include the breve (as in [pt], indicating that the vowel of pet is short), the cedilla (French garçon), the circumflex (raison d’être), the haek (Czech haek), the macron (as in [bt], indicating that the vowel of boat is long), the umlaut (German Göring), the dieresis (French naïve), the grave (French à la carte), and the tilde (Spanish señor), plus primary and secondary stress marks in words like dictionary ('dik-sh-'ner-). In dictionaries that do not avail themselves of certain symbols of the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA), e.g., the schwa (), other special marks serve a diacritical function, such as the ligatures frequently used to tie together the spelling of the sound in ship, the spelling of the sound in the middle of vision, the spelling of the voiceless [] in theme, and the spelling of the voiced sound in these. See also ACCENT (2).
m’, zy
-m
’, ra’z -; r
t], indicating that the vowel of pet is short), the cedilla (French garçon), the circumflex (raison d’être), the ha
ek (Czech ha
t], indicating that the vowel of boat is long), the umlaut (German Göring), the dieresis (French naïve), the grave (French à la carte), and the tilde (Spanish señor), plus primary and secondary stress marks in words like dictionary ('dik-sh
). In dictionaries that do not avail themselves of certain symbols of the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA), e.g., the schwa (
sound in ship, the spelling of the 
sound in the middle of vision, the spelling of the voiceless [
] in theme, and the spelling of the voiced 
sound in these. See also ACCENT (2).
