Mid-Week Mini: You Gotta Respect the Tittle

In this week’s Mid-Week Mini Episode, we talk about the tittle.

You know that tiny little dot over the lowercase letter “i”? The one you’ve never thought about unless it was missing and suddenly the word looked wrong? That dot actually has a name. It’s called a tittle.

Yep. Not a joke, not a typo, not something made up by a bored English teacher trying to feel important. The official linguistic term for that dot is tittle, and it’s been around for centuries. The word comes from the Latin titulus, meaning a small inscription or label, which makes sense because originally, letters like “i” didn’t even have dots. As handwriting got faster and more stylized in medieval manuscripts, the vertical stroke of the “i” started blending into nearby letters. The dot was added purely for clarity, and that tiny clarifying mark eventually earned its own name.

And it’s not just the “i.” The dot over a lowercase “j” is also a tittle. Uppercase letters don’t get them, which feels unfair, but that’s the rules. What’s wild is how specific language gets when you zoom in far enough. We have a word for that microscopic detail that most of us would describe as “the dot thingy.” Linguists looked at that dot and said, “No, no. That deserves a proper title.”

So the next time someone tells you to mind the details, you can honestly say you’re dotting your i’s and crossing your t’s — and if you really want to sound insufferable at a dinner party, you can add, “Also, the dot is called a tittle.”

The internet says it’s true.