Titlo
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| Diacritical marks |
|---|
|
accent
breve ( ˘ )
hook / dấu hỏi ( ̉ ) |
| Marks sometimes used as diacritics |
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apostrophe ( ’ ) |
Titlo is an extended diacritic symbol first used in old Cyrillic manuscripts, e.g., in Old Church Slavonic and Old East Slavic languages. The word is a borrowing from the Greek "τίτλος", "title". The titlo still appears in inscriptions on modern icons and in service books printed in Church Slavonic.
The titlo is drawn as a zigzag line over a text. The usual form is short stroke up, falling slanted line, short stroke up; an alternative is like a sideways square bracket: short stroke up, horizontal line, short stroke down. It has several meanings depending on the context.
One was to mark letters when they are used as numerals. This is a quasi-decimal system similar to Greek numerals.
It is also used as an over-text abbreviation mark commonly used for words of importance, such as Tsar (Цесарь → Црь), Her Majesty (Государыня → Гня), God's Mother (Богородица → Бца), Jesus Christ (Иисус Христос → Ис Хс), God (Богъ → Бъ), Lord, as applied to God (Господь → Гь, see Fig. 2), etc. This corresponds to the Nomina sacra (Latin: "Sacred names") tradition of using contractions for certain frequently occurring names in Greek Scriptures.
In manuscripts, the titlo was often used to mark the place where a scribe accidentally skipped the letter, if there was no space to draw the missed letter above.
A short titlo is used over a single letter or over the place of abbreviation; a long titlo is used over the whole word.