Diacritics vs. Accent Marks

Click a character to copy it. Use Details for its technical record.

A Unicode mark category describes an encoded character. An accent is a term used in a writing or pronunciation system. These boundaries overlap but do not define the same set.

The explorer uses a reproducible union: Diacritic=Yes or General_Category Mn, Mc or Me. This includes spacing characters and marks that are not linguistic accents. A category cannot tell you how a particular language uses a character.

Compare the spacing acute accent U+00B4 with combining acute U+0301. Their behavior in text differs even when their glyphs look related. Variation selectors are marks in Unicode but should not be described as ordinary language accents.

Use encoded properties to inspect text. Use a scoped orthography authority to explain pronunciation, tone, spelling or modern usage. Our ledger keeps those evidence levels separate.

Exact examples

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