The tie is a symbol in the shape of an arc similar to a large breve, used in Greek, phonetic alphabets, and Z notation. It can be used between two characters with spacing as punctuation, or non-spacing as a diacritic. It can be above or below, and reversed. Its forms are called tie, double breve, enotikon or papyrological hyphen, ligature tie, and undertie.

Uses [ edit ]

Greek [ edit ]

The enotikon (ενωτικόν, enōtikón, lit. "uniter"), papyrological hyphen, or Greek hyphen was a low tie mark found in late Classical and Byzantine papyri.[1] In an era when Greek texts were typically written scripta continua, the enotikon served to show that a series of letters should be read as a single word rather than misunderstood as two separate words. (Its companion mark was the hypodiastole, which showed that a series of letters should be understood as two separate words.[2]) Although modern Greek now uses the Latin hyphen, the Hellenic Organization for Standardization included mention of the enotikon in its romanization standard[3] and Unicode is able to reproduce the symbol with its characters U+203F ‿ UNDERTIE and U+035C ͜ COMBINING DOUBLE BREVE BELOW.[2][4]

The enotikon was also used in Greek musical notation, as a slur under two notes. When a syllable was sung with three notes, this slur was used in combination with a double point and a diseme overline.[4]

International Phonetic Alphabet [ edit ]

The International Phonetic Alphabet uses two type of ties: the ligature tie (IPA #433), above or below two symbols and the undertie (IPA #509) between two symbols.

Ligature tie [ edit ]

The ligature tie, also called double inverted breve, is used to represent double articulation (e.g. [k͡p]), affricates (e.g. [t͡ʃ]) or prenasalized consonant (e.g. [m͡b]) in the IPA. It is mostly found above but can also be found below when more suitable (e.g. [k͜p]).

On computers, it is encoded with characters U+0361 ͡ COMBINING DOUBLE INVERTED BREVE and, as an alternative when raisers might be interfering with the bow, U+035C ͜ COMBINING DOUBLE BREVE BELOW.

Undertie [ edit ]

The undertie is used to represent linking (absence of a break) in the IPA. For example it is used to indicate liaison (e.g. /vuz‿ave/) but can also be used for other types of sandhi.

On computers, the character used is U+203F ‿ UNDERTIE. This is a spacing character, not to be confused with the alternative (below-letter) form of the ligature tie (a͜b U+035C ͜ COMBINING DOUBLE BREVE BELOW), which is a combining character.[5]

Uralic Phonetic Alphabet [ edit ]

The Uralic Phonetic Alphabet uses several forms of the tie or double breve:[6][7]

The triple inverted breve or triple breve below indicates a triphthong

The double inverted breve, also known as the ligature tie, marks a diphthong

The double inverted breve below indicates a syllable boundary between vowels

The undertie is used for prosody

The inverted undertie is used for prosody.

Other uses [ edit ]

Various forms of the tie

The double breve is used in the phonetic notation of the American Heritage Dictionary in combination with a double o, o͝o, to represent the near-close near-back rounded vowel (ʊ in IPA).[8]

The triple breve below is used in the phonetic writing Rheinische Dokumenta for three letter combinations.[9]

The character tie is used for sequence concatenation in Z notation. It is encoded with U+2040 ⁀ CHARACTER TIE in Unicode. For example "s⁀t" represents the concatenation sequence of sequences called s and t; and the notation "⁀/q" is the distributed concatenation of the sequence of sequences called q.[10]

The ligature tie is used in the logotypes of mobilkom Austria and its A1 brand.

Encoding [ edit ]

name character HTML code Unicode Unicode name sample non-spacing double breve ͝ ͝ U+035D combining double breve o͝o ligature tie ͡ ͡ U+0361 combining double inverted breve /k͡p/ ligature tie below,

enotikon ͜ ͜ U+035C combining double breve below /k͜p/ spacing undertie,

enotikon ‿ ‿ U+203F undertie /vuz‿ave/ tie ⁀ ⁀ U+2040 character tie s⁀t inverted undertie ⁔ ⁔ U+2054 inverted undertie o⁔o

The diacritic signs triple inverted breve, triple breve, and double inverted breve have not yet been encoded for computers.

Unicode has characters similar to the tie:

U+23DC ⏜ TOP PARENTHESIS and U+23DD ⏝ BOTTOM PARENTHESIS

and U+2322 ⌢ FROWN and U+2323 ⌣ SMILE

and U+2050 ⁐ CLOSE UP , which is a proofreading mark

See also [ edit ]