Tittle
From Biocrawler, the free encyclopedia.
A tittle is a small distinguishing mark, such as a diacritic or the dot over an i. It first appeared in Latin manuscripts in the 11th century, to distinguish the letter i from strokes of nearby letters. Although originally a larger mark, it was reduced to a dot when Roman-style typefaces were introduced.
The only place a modern reader is apt to confront this word is in a Bible verse, Matthew 5:18 (NKJV): "For assuredly, I say to you, till heaven and earth pass away, one jot or one tittle will by no means pass from the law till all is fulfilled." "Jot" is an obscure synonym for the Greek letter "iota"; "tittle" the word for the dot placed over it; the quotation uses them as an example of extremely minor details.
In the modern Turkish alphabet, the tittle is an actual diacritical mark distinguishing two different phonemes, appearing even on top of capital letters: I / ı, with the absence of a tittle, representing the sound [ɯ], and İ / i, with the inclusion of a tittle, representing [i].
