(typography) Any small dot, stroke, ordiacritical mark, especially if part of aletter, or of a letter-like abbreviation; in particular, the dots over the Latinlettersi andj.
1590, Bales,The Arte of Brachygraphie (quoted in Daid King's 2001 'The Ciphers of the Monks'):
The foure pricks ortittles are these. The first is a full prick or period. The second is a comma or crookedtittle.
1965, P. A. Marijnen,The Encyclopedia of the Bible:
The words "jot" and "tittle" in this passage refer to diacritic marks, that is, dashes, dots, or commas added to a letter to accentuate the pronunciation.
1987, Andrea van Arkel-De Leeuw van Weenen,Möðruvallabók, AM 132 Fol: Index and concordance, page xii:
(the page calls both "a superscript sign (hooklike)" and also a diacritical abbreviation of "er" (er#Icelandic) "tittles")
2008, Roy Blount,Alphabet juice: the energies, gists, and spirits of letters:
Atittle is more or less the same thing (the dot over an i, for instance), except that it can be traced back to Medieval Latin for a little mark over or under a letter, such as an accent ague or a cedilla. I don't know whether anumlaut is one or twotittles. Maybe it's ajot and atittle side by side.
I am living fast to see the time when a book that misses its tide shall be neglected, as the moon by day, or like mackerel a week after the season. No man has more nicely observed our climate than the bookseller who bought the copy of this work; he knows to atittle what subjects will best go off in a dry year, and which it is proper to expose foremost when the weather-glass is fallen to much rain.
