Adobe PS: cedilla
Unicode: 00B8, 0327
Languages: Albanian, Basque, Catalan, English, French, Occitan, Pizzonese, Portuguese, Turkish, Walloon
Cedilla
History and examples of use
The shape of the cedilla origins in the lower part of cursive lowercase z, and its name comes from old Spanish name of the character. In Spanish, it is not used since the reform of orthography in the 18th century, when it was replaced by the letter z. Most commonly, cedilla appears below the letter c (ç) in Western Roman languages where it represents the “s” sound where the “c” would represent the “k” sound. In Turkish, it is also used with s (ş).
In Cameroon, languages using the General Alphabet for Cameroon Languages (GACL) have the cedilla under vowels to indicate nasalization, like the ogonek is used in some European or American languages. GACL uses a wide range of letters for vowels : basic Latin vowels (a̧ ȩ i̧ o̧ u̧), schwa (ə̧), Latin epsilon or open E (ɛ̧), open O (ɔ̧) and I with stroke (ɨ̧).
Notes
Although it is wrong, cedilla is commonly used instead of comma accent bellow letters in Romanian and Lithuanian. For further details refer to the comma accent.
Design
The cedilla may have various shapes; most common one resembles the numeral 5 without the horizontal bar in the upper part of the character, and it touches the character to which it belongs. Another, less common version does not touch the character. Because ç is included in most western typefaces, there are many examples as how to draw it properly.