Editing Mater lectionis (section)

===Arabic===
In Arabic, there is no choice, and the almost invariable rule is that a long vowel is written with a ''mater lectionis'' and a short vowel with a diacritic symbol, but the [[Uthman]]ic orthography, the one in which the [[Quran]] is traditionally written and printed, has some differences, which are not always consistent. Also, under influence from orthography of European languages, transliterating of vowels in borrowed words into Arabic is usually done using ''matres lectionis'' in place of diacritics, even when the vowel transliterated is short or when words from another Semitic language, such as Hebrew, are transliterated. That phenomenon is augmented by the neglect of diacritics in most printed forms since the beginning of mechanical printing.

The name given to the three ''matres lectionis'' by traditional Arabic grammar is {{Transliteration|ar|ḥurūf al-līn wa-l-madd}} ({{lang|ar|حروف اللين والمدّ}}, 'consonants of softness and lengthening'), or {{Transliteration|ar|ḥurūf al-ʿilla}} ({{lang|ar|حروف العلّة}}, 'causal consonants' or 'consonants of infirmity', because as in Greek grammar, words with 'accidents' were deemed to be afflicted, ill, in opposition to 'healthy' words without accidents).<ref>''Encyclopedia of Arabic Language and Linguistics'', Brill, 2006, 2.308ff.</ref>

Informal orthographies of spoken varieties of Arabic also use ''[[He (letter)#Arabic hāʾ|hāʾ]]'' {{lang|he|ه}} to indicate a shorter version of ''[[Aleph#Arabic|alif]]'' {{lang|he|ا}} in final position, a usage augmented by the ambiguity of the use of {{lang|he|ه}} and ''[[tāʾ marbūṭah]]'' {{lang|he|ة}} in formal Arabic orthography. It is a formal orthography in other languages that use Arabic script, such as [[Kurdish alphabets]].