Editing Lepsius Standard Alphabet (section)

==Tones==
[[Tone (linguistics)|Tones]] are marked with acute and grave accents (backticks) to the right and near the top or the bottom of the corresponding vowel. The diacritic may be underlined for a lower pitch, distinguishing in all eight possible tones.

Tone is not written directly, but rather needs to be established separately for each language. For example, the acute accent may indicate a high tone, a rising tone, or, in the case of Chinese, any tone called "rising" (上) for historical reasons.

{| class="wikitable Unicode"
! S.A.
! Level value
! Contour value
|-
| ma´ <ref>In Lepsius's publications, this looks like a vertical bar {{angbr IPA|ˈ}}. However, it is repeatedly called "acute" in the text.</ref>
| [má]
| [mǎ]
|-
| ma
| [mā]
|-
| ma`
| [mà]
| [mâ]
|}

Low rising and falling tones can be distinguished from high rising and falling tones by underlining the accent mark:  {{angbr|ma´̠, ma`̠}}.  The underline also transcribes the Chinese ''yin'' tones, under the mistaken impression that these tones are actually lower.  Two additional tone marks, without any defined phonetic value, are used for Chinese: "level" maˏ (平) and checked maˎ (入); these may also be underlined.