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Some sources distinguish "diacritical marks" (marks upon standard letters in the A–Z 26-letter alphabet) from "special characters" (letters not marked but radically modified from the standard 26-letter alphabet) such as Old English and Icelandic eth (Ð, ð) and thorn (uppercase Þ, lowercase þ), and ligatures such as Latin and Anglo-Saxon Æ (minuscule: æ), and German eszett (ß; final ...
In English orthography, many words feature a silent e (single, final, non-syllabic ‘e’), most commonly at the end of a word or morpheme. Typically it represents a vowel sound that was formerly pronounced, but became silent in late Middle English or Early Modern English .
(The regular ending -ed is also devoiced after voiceless consonants in regular verbs, as described under English verbs § Past tense, but this is not now shown in the spelling – for example, the -ed in blessed and whipped is pronounced as a t, and these words were formerly written blest and whipt.
e and i in separate segments (and often separate syllables or morphemes) Prefixes de-or re-before words starting with i (deindustrialize, reignite, etc.) Inflection -ing of those verbs with roots ending in -e that do not drop the e (being, seeing, swingeing, etc.) Others: albeit, atheism, cuneiform*, deify*, deity*, herein, nuclei, onomatopoeia
In Finnish, apostrophes are used in the declension of foreign names or loan words that end in a consonant when written but are pronounced with a vowel ending, e.g. show'ssa ('in a show'), Bordeaux'hon ('to Bordeaux'). For Finnish as well as Swedish, there is a closely related use of the colon.
The Latin word vīrus was a neuter noun of the second declension, but neuter second declension nouns ending in -us (rather than -um) are rare enough that inferring rules is difficult. (One rare attested plural, pelage as a plural of pelagus , is borrowed from Greek, so does not give guidance for virus .)
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Verbs ending in a consonant plus o also typically add -es: veto → vetoes. Verbs ending in a consonant plus y add -es after changing the y to an i: cry → cries. In terms of pronunciation, the ending is pronounced as / ɪ z / after sibilants (as in lurches), as / s / after voiceless consonants other than sibilants (as in makes), and as / z ...