The only diacritic native to Modern English is the two dots (representing a vowel hiatus): its usage has tended to fall off except in certain publications and particular cases.
[3][a] Proper nouns are not generally counted as English terms except when accepted into the language as an eponym – such as Geiger–Müller tube.
Unlike continental European languages, English orthography tends to use digraphs (like "sh", "oo", and "ea") rather than diacritics to indicate more sounds than can be accommodated by the letters of the Latin alphabet.
For example, the caron in Karel Čapek; the ring in Åland; or phở with the Vietnamese letter Ơ (O with horn) with hook above.
Some sources distinguish "diacritical marks" (marks upon standard letters in the A–Z 26-letter alphabet) from "special characters" (letters not marked but radically modified from the standard 26-letter alphabet) such as Old English and Icelandic eth (Ð, ð) and thorn (uppercase Þ, lowercase þ), and ligatures such as Latin and Anglo-Saxon Æ (minuscule: æ), and German eszett (ß; final -ß, often -ss even in German and always in Swiss Standard German).
The second of two vowels in a hiatus can be marked with a diaeresis (or "tréma") – as in words such as coöperative, daïs and reëlect – but its use has become less common, sometimes being replaced by the use of a hyphen.
Examples of a partial removal include resumé (from the French résumé) and haček (from the Czech háček) because of the change in pronunciation of the initial vowels.
In reverent and slightly poetic usage are commonly two -ed suffixed adjectives, if prefixed by a superlative, “learnèd” whereas rarely so “belovèd”.
This list expands to almost all -ed words in hymns and old rhymes if by chance helping with rhythm, emphasis or musical cadence.
[citation needed] In Canadian English, words of French origin retain their orthography more often than in other English-speaking countries, such as the usage of é (e with acute) in café, Montréal, née, Québec, and résumé.
[22] However problems with representation of diacritical marks continued even in scholarly publishing and dissertations up to the word processor era.
[23][full citation needed] Mechanical typewriter keyboards manufactured for English-speaking countries seldom include diacritics.