Dot (diacritic)
The point is a diacritical mark, which is used in many different languages , and is also set for other purposes.
- 2.1 Character Sets
Use
As a diacritical mark
The point as a diacritical mark ( Lautungsvariante ) comes in European languages (except for i and j, where it is usually not considered as such ) relatively rare. Examples are C / C and g / g in the Maltese and Irish ( old spelling ) ), E / E in Lithuanian, i / İ in Turkish and ż / Ż in Polish and Maltese.
As other Lautungzeichen
In addition, you use the dot notation for the fifth of the tones of standard Chinese, the neutral tone (Chinese轻声/轻声, Pinyin qīng Sheng, lighter tone ').
As a scientific symbol
In the notation of physics and engineering, the point is usually used to represent the derivative of a size specifically and exclusively by the time the Newtonian notation of differentials:
In some cases (especially when using polar coordinates) is, however, also expressed as a derivative with respect to an angle with this notation:
The second derivative with respect to time is then noted with a colon ( Trema ). This usage dates back to the differential calculus by Isaac Newton, while in mathematics throughout the Leibnizian notation with the apostrophe (now as typographically an independent character, the Prime ) was used.
Display on the computer
Fonts
In the ASCII character set, the point accent does not occur. In the character sets of ISO 8859 family selected character occur with the dot accent.
Unicode contains - on the examples given above also - more composite Latin letters with dot and can contain any characters with point by adjusting a combining point accent U 0307 COMBINING DOT ABOVE represent ( Unicode block combining diacritics 0300- 036F ); the single Glyph of Diakritikums is on codepoint U 02 D9 DOT ABOVE Unicode Spacing Modifier Letters block ( 02B0 - 02FF ). [NB 1]
TeX and LaTeX can represent any character with dot. There are to two different commands:
- In Text mode for text set generated \. C a ċ.
- In math mode for the set of formulas \ dot produced a formula.