Diacritical Usage
A special triangular colon symbol is used in IPA to indicate that the preceding sound is long. Its form is that of two triangles, each a little larger than a point (dot) of a standard colon, pointing toward each other. It is available in Unicode as modifier letter triangular colon, Unicode U+02D0 (ː). A regular colon is often used as a fallback when this character is not available, and in the practical orthography of some languages which have a phonemic long/short distinction in vowels.
If the upper triangle is used without the lower one, it designates a "half-long" vowel.
Read more about this topic: Colon (punctuation)
Famous quotes containing the word usage:
“Pythagoras, Locke, Socrates—but pages
Might be filled up, as vainly as before,
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—George Gordon Noel Byron (1788–1824)