EDIT Name: comma accent
Adobe PS: commaaccent
Unicode: 0326
Languages: Latvian, Romanian

Comma Accent (bellow the character)
History and examples of use

The comma accent is used in Romanian with ş and ţ, in Latvian with consonants ģ, ķ, ļ, ņ, ŗ.
Notes

It is easy to come across characters which have cedilla in place of a correct comma accent. In Romanian, the cedilla is common and tolerated, although wrong. In Latvian, the use of cedilla (which is merged with the character) is not practical, because it is not technically possible to connect it with letters such as Ķ or Ŗ. That is why it is better to draw the accent more comma like, so that it does not touch the character (sometimes it is called “not connecting cedilla”). Both for technical and aesthetic reasons, the comma accent is drawn above the lower case ģ, rotated by 180 degrees. The government of Soviet Latvia got rid of the ŗ / Ŗ characters in written Latvian and in Latvia, this rule is abided to since. However, in the Latvian communities abroad, the original orthography is used.

Please note that there is some confusion with regard to glyphs that involve the cedilla and the commaaccent acccents. Although Adobe Glyph List For New Fonts (version: 1.1 from 17 April 2003) recommends the use of names Tcommaaccent, Kcommaaccent, etc., in older fonts, there might be used older names Tcedilla, Kcedilla etc.

Design

Similar rules are to be abided to with both comma accents, the one alternating for a caron and the one placed bellow the character. It may be derived from apostrophe or from acute (in such case it should be rather vertical). The symbol should not draw as much attention as a sentence comma. Since tight leading is commonly needed, the symbol should be rather low. Comma accent is placed in the visual centre of the character with the exception of a lower case ŗ, where it is placed at the centre of the vertical stroke (same as with ļ).

From: diacritics.typo.cz

25th of May 2005

 mila