Dot (diacritic)

When used as a diacritic mark, the term dot primarily refers to the glyphs "combining dot above" (◌̇), and "combining dot below" (◌̣) which may be combined with some letters of the extended Latin alphabets in use in a variety of languages. Similar marks are used with other scripts.

Language scripts or transcription schemes that use the dot above a letter as a diacritical mark:

In mathematics and physics, when using Newton's notation the dot denotes the time derivative as in ${\displaystyle v={\dot {x}}}$. In addition, the overdot is one way used to indicate an infinitely repeating set of numbers in decimal notation, as in ${\displaystyle 0.{\dot {3}}}$, which is equal to the fraction 1⁄3, and ${\displaystyle 0.{\dot {1}}{\dot {4}}{\dot {2}}{\dot {8}}{\dot {5}}{\dot {7}}}$ or ${\displaystyle 0.{\dot {1}}4285{\dot {7}}}$, which is equal to 1⁄7.

In Canadian Aboriginal Syllabics, in addition to the middle dot as a letter, centred dot diacritic, and dot above diacritic, there also is a two-dot diacritic in the Naskapi language representing /_w_V/ which depending on the placement on the specific Syllabic letter may resemble a colon when placed vertically, diaeresis when placed horizontally, or a combination of middle dot and dot above diacritic when placed either at an angle or enveloping a small raised letter ᓴ. Additionally, in Northwestern Ojibwe, a small raised /wi/ as /w/, the middle dot is raised farther up as either ᣜ or ᣝ; there also is a raised dot "Final" (ᣟ), which represents /w/ in some Swampy Cree and /y/ in some Northwestern Ojibwe.

The diacritics 〮 and 〯 , known as Bangjeom (방점; 傍點), were used to mark pitch accents in Hangul for Middle Korean. They were written to the left of a syllable in vertical writing and above a syllable in horizontal writing.

In the Pe̍h-ōe-jī orthography of Hokkien, a dot above right is used in the letter o͘ to represent the vowel /ɔ/.

In Unicode, the dot is encoded as a combining diacritic at:

and at: