The name of the dot above “i” and “j”

by Jakub Marian

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This article could have contained just one word: tittle. Tittle, unsurprisingly pronounced /ˈtɪtl/, is the name used in typography for the dot above “i” and “j”. “Tittle” originally meant an insignificant amount of something, but it is rarely used in this meaning in contemporary English.

It is not without interest that the idiom “to a T” meaning “perfectly, with attention to every detail” was probably originally “to a tittle” which was later abbreviated as “to a T”, and the “T” has lost its association with the word “tittle”.

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