Wikidata facts
- Subclass of
- diacritic
- Image
- IPA Unicode 0x0304.svg
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- Commons category
- Macron (diacritic)
- topic has template
- Template:Letters with macron
- opposite of
- macron below
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Encyclopedic overview
A macron (/ˈmækrɒn, ˈmeɪ-/ MAK-ron, MAY-) is a diacritical mark: it is a straight bar ¯ placed above a letter, usually a vowel. Its name derives from Ancient Greek μακρόν (makrón) 'long' because it was originally used to mark long or heavy syllables in Greco-Roman metrics. It now more often marks a long vowel. In the International Phonetic Alphabet, the macron is used to indicate a mid-tone; the sign for a long vowel is instead a modified triangular colon ⟨ː⟩.
The opposite is the breve ⟨˘⟩, which marks a short or light syllable or a short vowel.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “macron” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.