Welcome to Trivia Tuesday.
Word Nymph has declared this Language Trivia week. Every day of this week, Monday through Saturday, I’ll throw out a question. If you know the answer or would like to take a guess, do so as a Comment to that day’s post or simply wait until next Monday, when all answers will be revealed. Good luck!
Today’s question:
What is the term for the dot placed over the lower case i and lower case j?
Word Nymph 
Is it a Tittle? Jesus said not to change the Old Testament a dot or a tittle. I think this is what it refers to.
Easy answer … it is called a “tittle.”
(Something at the top – like a title.)
My questions is whether or not this is considered a diacritical mark – like a cedilla, tilde, circumflex, or macron.
“Jot or tittle” where “jot” was a translation of the Hebrew letter “yud,” the smallest letter in the alphabet, and “tittle” was the dot.
Too late, I see! To answer Paul, I believe it is a diacritical mark. Just like the cedilla is used with only lower case c, the tittle is used with only the lower case j and i – no diacritical markings used with upper case letters in any language.
Bet you don’t know what we call it in the printing business – we call it a “head-dot.” Of course, it was more relevant in the old days of handsetting work. Typeslugs become broken as printing progresses and need replacing. With electronic typesetting and offset lithography today, that problem doesn’t exist. We printers don’t call it a “tittle” mainly because it could be confused with “title” (depending on your accent) – printing people are not what you might call academically minded people!