typesetting Typesetting is the composition of text for publication, display, or distribution by means of arranging physical ''type'' (or ''sort'') in mechanical systems or '' glyphs'' in digital systems representing '' characters'' (letters and other ...

, the hook above () is a

diacritic A diacritic (also diacritical mark, diacritical point, diacritical sign, or accent) is a glyph added to a letter or to a basic glyph. The term derives from the Ancient Greek (, "distinguishing"), from (, "to distinguish"). The word ''diacrit ...

mark placed on top of vowels in the

Vietnamese alphabet The Vietnamese alphabet (, ) is the modern writing script for the Vietnamese language. It uses the Latin script based on Romance languages like French language, French, originally developed by Francisco de Pina (1585–1625), a missionary from P ...

. In shape it looks like a tiny

question mark The question mark (also known as interrogation point, query, or eroteme in journalism) is a punctuation, punctuation mark that indicates a question or interrogative clause or phrase in many languages. History The history of the question mark is ...

without the dot underneath, or a tiny glottal stop (ʔ). For example, a capital A with a hook is "Ả", and a lower case "u" with a hook is "ủ". The hook is usually written to the right of the

circumflex The circumflex () is a diacritic in the Latin and Greek scripts that is also used in the written forms of many languages and in various romanization and transcription schemes. It received its English name from "bent around"a translation of ...

in conventional Vietnamese orthography. If Vietnamese characters are unavailable, it is often replaced by a question mark after the vowel (

VIQR Vietnamese Quoted-Readable (usually abbreviated VIQR), also known as Vietnet, is a convention for writing Vietnamese using ASCII characters encoded in only 7 bits, making possible for Vietnamese to be supported in computing and communication syste ...

encoding). This diacritic functions as a

tone Tone may refer to: Visual arts and color-related * Tone (color theory), a mix of tint and shade, in painting and color theory * Tone (color), the lightness or brightness (as well as darkness) of a color * Toning (coin), color change in coins * ...

marker, indicating a "mid falling" tone ('): which is "dipping" (˨˩˥) in Southern Vietnamese or "falling" (˧˩) in Northern Vietnamese; ''see Vietnamese language § Regional variation: Tones''. The Southern "dipping" tone is similar to the questioning intonation in English. The hook above can be used as a

marker, but is not regarded as part of the alphabet.

Letters with hook above

Unicode

Apart from precomposed characters, in multiple scripts, the combining diacritical mark is encoded at

External links

More information for typographers
Latin-script diacritics Vietnamese language Vietnamese alphabets {{latin-script-stub

Letters with hook above

Unicode

See also

External links