Editing Greek language (section)

====Diacritics====
{{main|Greek diacritics}}
In addition to the letters, the Greek alphabet features a number of [[diacritic|diacritical signs]]: three different accent marks ([[acute accent|acute]], [[grave accent|grave]], and [[circumflex]]), originally denoting different shapes of [[pitch accent]] on the stressed vowel; the so-called breathing marks ([[rough breathing|rough]] and [[smooth breathing]]), originally used to signal presence or absence of word-initial /h/; and the [[trema (diacritic)|diaeresis]], used to mark the full syllabic value of a vowel that would otherwise be read as part of a diphthong. These marks were introduced during the course of the Hellenistic period. Actual usage of the grave in [[penmanship|handwriting]] saw a rapid decline in favor of uniform usage of the acute during the late 20th century, and it has only been retained in [[typography]].

After the writing reform of 1982, most diacritics are no longer used. Since then, Greek has been written mostly in the simplified [[Greek diacritics|monotonic orthography]] (or monotonic system), which employs only the acute accent and the diaeresis. The traditional system, now called the polytonic orthography (or polytonic system), is still used internationally for the writing of [[Ancient Greek]].