The tie is a symbol in the shape of an arc similar to a large breve, used in Ancient Greek, phonetic alphabets, and Z notation. It can be used between two characters with spacing as punctuation, or non-spacing as a diacritic. It can be above or below, and reversed. Its forms are called tie, double breve, enotikon, ligature tie, papyrological hyphen, and undertie.
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The Papyrological hyphen or enotikon can be found in Greek as written on papyri, before space was invented.[1] The enotikon ("uniter"), is used as a word non-divider, similar to hyphen, as opposed to the hypodiastole used as a word divider. The enotikon can be both spacing and non-spacing. On computers both characters U+203F ‿ undertie and U+035C ͜ combining double breve below can be used[2][3]
Enotikon was also used in Ancient Greek music notation, as a slur under two notes. When a syllable was sung with three notes, this slur was used in combination with a double point and a diseme over the notes.[3]
The International Phonetic Alphabet uses two type of ties : the ligature tie (IPA #433), above or below two symbols ; and the undertie (IPA #509) between two symbols.
The ligature tie, also called double inverted breve, is used to represent double articulation (e.g. [k͡p]), affricates (e.g. [t͡ʃ]) or prenasalized consonant (e.g. [m͡b]) in the IPA. It is mostly found above but can also be found below when more suitable (e.g. [k͜p]).
On computers, it is encoded with characters U+0361 ͡ combining double inverted breve and, as an alternative when raisers might be interfering with the bow, U+035C ͜ combining double breve below.
The undertie is used to represent linking (absence of a break) in the IPA. For example it is used to indicate liaison (e.g. /vuz‿ave/) but can also be used for other types of sandhi.
On computers, the character used is U+203F ‿ undertie, a spacing character, which is not to be confused with a͜b U+035C ͜ combining double breve below, a combining diacritic, used as an alternative to the ligature tie ab͡ U+0361 ͡ combining double inverted breve.[4]
The Uralic Phonetic Alphabet uses several forms of the tie or double breve[5][6]:
The double breve is used in the phonetic notation of the American Heritage Dictionary in combination with a double o, o͝o, to represent the near-close near-back vowel (ʊ in IPA).[7]
The triple breve below is used in the phonetic writing Rheinische Dokumenta for three letter combinations.[8]
The character tie is used for sequence concatenation in Z notation. It is encoded with U+2040 ⁀ character tie in Unicode. For example "s⁀t" represents the concatenation sequence of sequences called s and t; and the notation "⁀/q" is the distributed concatenation of the sequence of sequences called q.[9]
The ligature tie is used in the logotypes of mobilkom Austria and its A1 brand.
| name | character | HTML code | Unicode | Unicode name | sample |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| non-spacing | |||||
| double breve | ͝ | ͝ | U+035D | combining double breve | o͝o |
| ligature tie | ͡ | ͡ | U+0361 | combining double inverted breve | /k͡p/ |
| ligature tie below, enotikon |
͜ | ͜ | U+035C | combining double breve below | /k͜p/ |
| spacing | |||||
| undertie, enotikon |
‿ | ‿ | U+203F | undertie | /vuz‿ave/ |
| tie | ⁀ | ⁀ | U+2040 | character tie | s⁀t |
| inverted undertie | ⁔ | ⁔ | U+2054 | inverted undertie | o⁔o |
The diacritic signs triple inverted breve, triple breve, and double inverted breve have not yet been encoded for computers.
Unicode has characters similar to the tie :