2967: Dot Your I’s Feb 4, 2025

Dot your i’s and cross your t’s, except that in the uppercase, <I> doesn’t have the dot (known as a tittle) like it does in lower case. Everything said here about <I> will also hold true for <J>, which emerged as a variant. 

In lower case, some letters have completely different forms <A> and <a> or <R> and <r>, but for the most part the letters are either simply smaller versions of their capital forms, perhaps with minor variations or reductions, and no other letter besides <I>/<i> becomes non-contiguous. This is not a diacritic, though it should be noted that in almost all cases where there is one, the tittle is replaced, rather than written above. 

It’s not found in Greek, even in the lower case now <Ι> <ι>, nor was it used for Latin, but did develop separately in Cyrillic <І> <і>. It is not entirely clear why this developed, but it was likely for clarity, as it is a small letter, and especially later in cursive forms could be easily confused with parts of other letters. Capital <I> never developed this, except in the 20th century as a variant in Turkish ⟨İ⟩, because by and large it was prominent enough, especially with bars running below, and sometimes above, on capital <ɪ> which not only helps with visual clarity, but also spacing before digital fonts.