Editing Tengwar (section)

=== ''Tehtar'' diacritics ===

[[File:Tehtar.png|thumb|''Tehtar'' [[diacritic]]s for vowels, consonant doubling, and nasal sounds]]

A ''tehta'' (Quenya "marking") is a [[diacritic]] placed above or below the tengwa. They can represent vowels, consonant doubling, or nasal sound.

As Tolkien explained in Appendix E of ''The Lord of the Rings'', the ''tehtar'' for vowels resemble Latin diacritics: circumflex (î) {{IPA|/a/}}, acute (í) {{IPA|/e/}}, dot (i) {{IPA|/i/}}, left curl (ı̔) {{IPA|/o/}}, and right curl (ı̓) {{IPA|/u/}}. Long vowels, excepting {{IPA|/a/}}, may be indicated by doubling the signs. Some languages from which {{IPA|/o/}} is absent or in which compared to {{IPA|/u/}} it appears sparsely, such as the [[Black Speech]], use left curl for {{IPA|/u/}}; other languages swap the signs for {{IPA|/e/}} and {{IPA|/i/}}.

A vowel occurring alone is drawn on the vowel carrier, which resembles [[dotless i]] (ı) for a short vowel or dotless j (ȷ) for a long vowel.