Editing Wade–Giles (section)

===Consonants and initial symbols===
A feature of the Wade–Giles system is the representation of the [[Aspiration (phonetics)|unaspirated-aspirated]] [[stop consonant]] pairs using a character resembling an [[apostrophe]]. Thomas Wade and others used the [[spiritus asper]] ({{asper}} or {{wg-apos}}), borrowed from the [[polytonic orthography]] of the [[Ancient Greek]] language. [[Herbert Giles]] and others used a left (opening) curved single [[quotation mark]] (‘) for the same purpose. A third group used a plain [[apostrophe]] (').  The [[backtick]], and visually similar characters, are sometimes seen in various electronic documents using the system.

Examples using the spiritus asper: ''p'', ''p{{wg-apos}}'', ''t'', ''t{{wg-apos}}'', ''k'', ''k{{wg-apos}}'', ''ch'', ''ch{{wg-apos}}''. The use of this character preserves ''b'', ''d'', ''g'', and ''j'' for the romanization of [[varieties of Chinese|Chinese varieties]] containing [[voiced]] consonants, such as [[Shanghainese]] (which has a full set of voiced consonants) and [[Min Nan]] (Hō-ló-oē) whose century-old [[Pe̍h-ōe-jī]] (POJ, often called Missionary Romanization) is similar to Wade–Giles. POJ, [[Legge romanization]], [[Simplified Wade]], and [[EFEO Chinese transcription]] use the letter {{angbr|h}} instead of an apostrophe-like character to indicate aspiration. (This is similar to the obsolete [[International Phonetic Alphabet|IPA]] convention before the [[History of the International Phonetic Alphabet|revisions of the 1970s]]). The convention of an apostrophe-like character or {{angbr|h}} to denote aspiration is also found in romanizations of other Asian languages, such as [[McCune–Reischauer]] for [[Korean language|Korean]] and [[ISO 11940]] for [[Thai language|Thai]].

People unfamiliar with Wade–Giles often ignore the spiritus asper, sometimes omitting them when copying texts, unaware that they represent vital information. Hànyǔ Pīnyīn addresses this issue by employing the Latin letters customarily used for voiced stops, unneeded in Mandarin, to represent the unaspirated stops: ''b, p, d, t, g, k, j, q, zh, ch.''

Partly because of the popular omission of apostrophe-like characters, the four sounds represented in Hànyǔ Pīnyīn by ''j'', ''q'', ''zh'', and ''ch'' often all become ''ch'', including in many proper names. However, if the apostrophe-like characters are kept, the system reveals a symmetry that leaves no overlap:
* The non-[[retroflex]] ''ch'' (Pīnyīn ''j'') and ''ch{{wg-apos}}'' (Pīnyīn ''q'') are always before either ''ü'' or ''i'', but never ''ih''. 
* The [[retroflex]] ''ch'' (Pīnyīn ''zh'') and ''ch{{wg-apos}}'' (Pīnyīn ''ch'') are always before ''ih'', ''a'', ''ê'', ''e'', ''o'', or ''u''.