ng a long dash over the letter “a” to make it a long vowel (ā) and putting a small cup over the “a” to make it a short vowel (ă). Now I know that the long mark is called a macron and theOur modern English language is a hodgepodge of many languages. We borrow words from another language we say cr?pe, ? la carte, r?sum?, or se?or but when writing these words, we stare at a blank screen wondering how to create these characters needed to cause our employment history to be pronounced r?sum? rather than resume.

I remember learning to read and write while in grammar school. One way the teacher helped us pronounce words was to separate the syllables and use accent marks to show where the emphasis or strongest beat should be. Take a look at the dictionary. You probably have one on your desk. In the pronunciation guide you will see some strange characters called diacritical marks above or below a letter to modify the way a word is pronounced. I remember writing a long dash over the letter “a” to make it a long vowel (ā) and putting a small cup over the “a” to make it a short vowel (ă). Now I know that the long mark is called a macron and the

reen wondering how to create these characters needed to cause our employment history to be pronounced r?sum? rather than resume.

I remember learning to read and write while in grammar school. One way the teacher helped us pronounce words was to separate the syllables and use accent marks to show where the emphasis or strongest beat should be. Take a look at the dictionary. You probably have one on your desk. In the pronunciation guide you will see some strange characters called diacritical marks above or below a letter to modify the way a word is pronounced. I remember writing a long dash over the letter “a” to make it a long vowel (ā) and putting a small cup over the “a” to make it a short vowel (ă). Now I know that the long mark is called a macron and the

. One way the teacher helped us pronounce words was to separate the syllables and use accent marks to show where the emphasis or strongest beat should be. Take a look at the dictionary. You probably have one on your desk. In the pronunciation guide you will see some strange characters called diacritical marks above or below a letter to modify the way a word is pronounced. I remember writing a long dash over the letter “a” to make it a long vowel (ā) and putting a small cup over the “a” to make it a short vowel (ă). Now I know that the long mark is called a macron and thebly have one on your desk. In the pronunciation guide you will see some strange characters called diacritical marks above or below a letter to modify the way a word is pronounced. I remember writing a long dash over the letter “a” to make it a long vowel (ā) and putting a small cup over the “a” to make it a short vowel (ă). Now I know that the long mark is called a macron and theng a long dash over the letter “a” to make it a long vowel (ā) and putting a small cup over the “a” to make it a short vowel (ă). Now I know that the long mark is called a macron and the short mark is called a breve. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diacritic to learn more about diacritical marks.

Writing the dash is one thing; typing it is another matter entirely. There are shortcuts you can use to create diacritical marks. When you engage CAPSLOCK, and hold down the ALT key, and type in a number on the numeric keypad you can create almost any character. For example to get this symbol: ? press the CAPSLOCK, press alt and type in 0233 on your numeric keypad. Mac users would select the “option” and “e” to create this same character. For a list of other shortcuts for both Microsoft and Mac, see