There is a precomposed Unicode character for the IPA letter⟨ç⟩, but not for the superscript form shown here, which requires the combining cedilla:⟨ᶜ̧⟩.
The spacing character U+00B8¸ is retained for compatibility with pre-Unicode encodings. It is equivalent to ◌̧ docked to a space, and there is no need for it in modern typography except to refer to itself.
Along with theogonek and the overstruck tilde◌̴, the cedilla is one of the few diacritics that contacts a letter and yet is used productively in Unicode, rather than there being a separate Unicode character assigned to each combination of letter and diacritic.
Retained in foreign loan words (mostly Frenchç):façade (orfacade).
2015 April 11, Tovin Lapan, “California birth certificates and accents: O’Connor alright, Ramón and José is not”, inThe Guardian[1] (in English), archived fromthe original on4 April 2025:
California, like several other states, prohibits the use of diacritical marks or accents on official documents. That means no tilde (~), no accent grave (`), no umlaut (¨) and certainly no cedilla (¸).
Michael Everson stresses the fact that these Latvian letters are derived with acomma not a cedilla, however, by convention their name in ISO standards remains "letter with cedilla." The same applies to Livonian orthography. (See:evertype.com – Latvian)
Used to markpalatalization:ģ = [ɟ],ķ = [c],ļ = [ʎ],ņ = [ɲ].
Before 1946, it was also used onr (ŗ), also to mark palatalization, but this usage has since then been abandoned, following current pronunciation tendencies, in which the sound /r/ is no longer palatalizable. However, outside of Latvia, the members of the Latvian diaspora continued to useŗ, and some still do even today (e.g., the newspaperBrīvā Latvija “Free Latvia,” as can be seen ontheir website).
Letters with cedillas are considered as separate letters with different names, and listed in the alphabet after the same letters without a cedilla (i.e.,ģ afterg,ķ afterk,ļ afterl, andņ aftern), and also in alphabetized lists (e.g., in dictionaries), like letters with háčeks (č,š,ž), and unlike letters with macrons (ā,ē,ī,ū), which are treated, for alphabetizing purposes, as the same as letters without macrons.
The lettersm ando with cedilla are not precomposed; withl andn, the cedilla will display as a comma due to customization for Latvian. The Unicode diacritic therefore needs to be used for Marshallese. In the case ofĻ ļ andŅ ņ, thezero-width non-joiner is needed for proper display.
