Editing Interpunct (section)

=={{anchor|Letter}}The middot as a letter==

A middot may be used as a [[consonant]] or [[modifier letter]], rather than as punctuation, in transcription systems and in language orthographies. For such uses Unicode provides the code point {{unichar|A78F|latin letter sinological dot}}.<ref>Some discussion of the inappropriateness of a punctuation mark for such use, as well as the near equivalence of the triangular half colon, can be found here:<br>[https://www.unicode.org/L2/L2010/10118-n3812.pdf Bibiko, Hans-Jörg (2010-04-07), On the proposed U+A78F LATIN LETTER MIDDLE DOT]<br>[https://www.unicode.org/L2/L2010/10124-mid-dot-letter.pdf Hill, Nathan (2010-04-14), Latin letter middle dot]</ref>

In [[Americanist phonetic notation]], the middot is a more common variant of the [[colon (letter)|colon]] {{angle bracket|꞉}} used to indicate [[vowel length]]. It may be called a ''half-colon'' in such usage. Graphically, it may be high in the letter space (the top dot of the colon) or centered as the interpunct. From Americanist notation, it has been adopted into the orthographies of several languages, such as [[Washo language|Washo]].

In the writings of [[Franz Boas]], the middot was used for palatal or [[Palatalization (phonetics)|palatalized]] consonants, e.g. {{anglebracket|kꞏ}} for IPA [c].

In the Sinological tradition of the [[36 initials]], the onset 影 (typically reconstructed as a [[glottal stop]]) may be transliterated with a middot {{angle bracket|ꞏ}}, and the onset 喻 (typically reconstructed as a [[null onset]]) with an [[modifier letter apostrophe|apostrophe]] {{angle bracket|ʼ}}. Conventions vary, however, and it is common for 影 to be transliterated with the apostrophe. These conventions are used both for Chinese itself and for other scripts of China, such as [[ʼPhags-pa script|ʼPhags-pa]]<ref>{{cite web |author=West, Andrew |author-link=Andrew West (linguist) |date=4 April 2009 |editor=Unicode Technical Committee |title=Proposal to encode a Middle Dot letter for Phags-pa transliteration (UTC Document L2/09-031R, ISO/IEC JTC1/SC2/WG2 Document N3567) |url=https://www.unicode.org/L2/L2009/09031r-n3567r.pdf}}</ref> and [[Jurchen script|Jurchen]].

In the [[Canadian Aboriginal syllabics]], a middle dot ⟨ᐧ⟩ indicates a syllable medial ⟨w⟩ in [[Cree language|Cree]] and [[Ojibwe language|Ojibwe]], ⟨y⟩ or ⟨yu⟩ in some of the [[Athapascan languages]], and a syllable medial ⟨s⟩ in [[Blackfoot language|Blackfoot]]. However, depending on the writing tradition, the middle dot may appear after the syllable it modifies (which is found in the Western style) or before the syllable it modifies (which is found in the Northern and Eastern styles). In Unicode, the middle dot is encoded both as independent glyph {{unichar|1427|CANADIAN SYLLABICS FINAL MIDDLE DOT}} or as part of a pre-composed letter, such as in {{unichar|143C|CANADIAN SYLLABICS PWI}}. In the [[Carrier syllabics]] subset, the middle dot Final indicates a glottal stop, but a centered dot diacritic on {{IPA|[ə]}}-position letters transform the vowel value to {{IPA|[i]}}, for example: {{unichar|1650|CANADIAN SYLLABICS CARRIER SE}}, {{unichar|1652|CANADIAN SYLLABICS CARRIER SI}}.