Macron

◌̄

Macron

Diacritics in Latin & Greek
accent
acute( ´ )
double acute( ˝ )
grave( ` )
double grave( ̏ )
breve( ˘ )
inverted breve( ̑ )
caron, háček( ˇ )
cedilla( ¸ )
circumflex( ˆ )
diaeresis, umlaut( ¨ )
dot( · )
hook, hook above( ̡ ̢ ̉ )
horn( ̛ )
iota subscript( ͅ )
macron( ¯ )
ogonek, nosinė( ˛ )
perispomene( ͂ )
ring( ˚, ˳ )
rough breathing( ῾ )
smooth breathing( ᾿ )
Marks sometimes used as diacritics
apostrophe( ’ )
bar( ◌̸ )
colon( : )
comma( , )
hyphen( ˗ )
tilde( ~ )
Diacritical marks in other scripts
Arabic diacritics
Early Cyrillic diacritics
kamora( ҄ )
pokrytie( ҇ )
titlo( ҃ )
Gurmukhī diacritics
Hebrew diacritics
Indic diacritics
anusvara( ं ং ം )
chandrabindu( ँ ఁ )
nukta( ़ )
virama( ् ് ్ ් ್ )
chandrakkala( ് )
IPA diacritics
Japanese diacritics
dakuten( ﾞ )
handakuten( ﾟ )
Khmer diacritics
Syriac diacritics
Thai diacritics
Related
Dotted circle◌
Punctuation marks
Logic symbols

A macron (/ˈmækrɒn, ˈmeɪ-/) is a diacritical mark, a straight bar (¯) placed above a letter, usually a vowel. Its name derives from the Greek μακρόν (makrón), meaning "long", and was originally used to mark long or heavy syllables in Greco-Roman metrics. It now more often marks a long vowel. In the International Phonetic Alphabet, the macron is used to indicate a mid-tone; the sign for a long vowel is instead a modified triangular colon ⟨ː⟩.

The opposite is the breve ⟨˘⟩, which marks a short or light syllable or a short vowel.

In Greco-Roman metrics and in the description of the metrics of other literatures, the macron was introduced and is still widely used to mark a long (heavy) syllable. Even relatively recent classical Greek and Latin dictionaries are still concerned with indicating only the length (weight) of syllables; that is why most still do not indicate the length of vowels in syllables that are otherwise metrically determined. Many textbooks about Ancient Rome and Greece use the macron even if it was not actually used at that time.

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Wikipedia