Because there are more letter sounds than there are letters in the alphabet, dictinaries use diacritical marks to indicate which phoneme to give to a grapheme; that is, which sound to give to a letter unit. Although we do not typically use diacritical marks for consonant sounds, we do teach them for vowel sounds.

The most common diacritical marks are the long vowel mark ( ¯ ), called the macron; the short vowel mark ( ˘ ), called the breve, and the schwa mark ( ə ).

Long Vowel Mark

The long vowel mark placed over a vowel indicates that it will be pronounced just as it sounds when we recite the alphabet:

• ā as in ate
• ē as in evil
• ī as in ice
• ō as in open
• ū as in use or in flute
• ȳ as in cry

Short Vowel Mark

The short vowel mark placed over a vowel is as follows:

• ă as in apple
• ĕ as in elementary
• ĭ as in idiom
• ŏ as in on
• ŭ as in under
• (Note that no mark is given for short y; the short i sound is used instead.)

Schwa Mark

The schwa mark represents the indistinct vowel sound that is the unaccented or unstressed syllable of a multisyllabic word:

• ə as in ago
• ə as in happen
• ə as in legible
• ə as in common
• ə as in suggest