Unique special characters have "diacritical marks" that give Latin alphabets new letters and sounds for various languages.

"It is gratifying to note a great improvement in the spelling and pronunciation of Balkan dance names and the recent standardization of these often difficult foreign words. As to the spelling, there is a good tendency to spell Balkan dances in the Latin ("Latinica") alphabet of the Serbo-Croatian language. The latest breakthrough toward this consistency is in Bulgarian. Actually, Bulgarian is akin to Macedonian as Serbian is akin to Croatian. We have been using the Latinica rather than the phonetic which is subject to so many interpretations (such as dajčovo instead of dajchovo, daychovo, or daichovo; pajduško instead of pajdushko or paidushko; and šopsko instead of shopsko)."

–Ivan "John" Filcich.

In addition, there is another special case having to do with the Romanian language.

"Although the Romanian Academy standard mandates the comma-below variants for the sounds /sh/ and /ts/, the cedilla variants are still widely used. Many printed and online texts still incorrectly use "s with cedilla" and "t with cedilla". This state of affairs is due to an initial lack of glyph standardization, compounded by the lack of computer font support for the comma-below variants. The lack of support for the comma diacritics has been corrected in current versions of major operating systems: Windows Vista or newer, Linux distributions after 2005, and currently supported Mac OS versions. As mandated by the European Union, Microsoft released a font update to correct this deficiency in Windows XP in early 2007, soon after Romania joined the European Union."

–Wikipedia

See the convenient chart for folk dance teachers, Selected HTML Special Characters, a printable cheat sheet of specially selected special characters showing the HTML codes for website design. Print it, cut it out, and tape to your monitor when you're editing HTML files!

Find more information about special characters at Alan Wood's Unicode Resources.

Following the Name and Description section below is a more comprehensive List of HTML Special Characters.

acute accent

(uh-KYOOT ak-sent) A diagonal mark, placed over a letter to represent a particular sound. Slants from upper right down to lower left. Used in Czech, French, Hungarian, Icelandic, Irish, Polish, Portuguese, Serbo-Croatian, Slovakian, Spanish, and Latinized Macedonian. Examples: Á á Ć ć Ǵ ǵ É é Ḱ ḱ Í í Ĺ ĺ Ń ń Ŕ ŕ Ś ś Ý ý Ź ź.

breve

(BREEV) A curved mark with the open side up that is placed over a vowel or other letter, such as an "A" or "G." Used in Latin, Romanian, Turkish, and Latinized Bulgarian. Examples: Ă ă Ğ ğ.

caret

(KHER-et) See "circumflex."

caron

(KHAR-un) See "hachek."

cedilla

(sih-DIL-uh) A tiny curved symbol, like a backward "c," placed at the bottom (or top) of a letter to indicate a different pronunciation. Used in French, Polish, Portuguese, and Turkish. Examples: Ç ç Ę ę Ģ ģ Ļ ļ Ņ ņ Ŗ ŗ Ş ş Ţ ţ.
(Note that with the "g" the character is above.)

circumflex

(SER-cum-fleks) A mark like the caret (the "hat" symbol found on the "6" key of a keyboard) placed over a letter to indicate various pronunciations. Used in French, Polish, Romanian, and Latinized Bulgarian. Examples: Â â Ĉ ĉ Ê ê Ĝ ĝ Ĥ ĥ Î î Ĵ ĵ Ŝ ŝ Ŵ ŵ Ŷ ŷ.

comma below

(CAH-mah bee-LOW) A comma placed below a letter. Used in Romanian. Examples: Ș ș Ț ț.

diaeresis

(dai-er-IH-sis) See "umlaut."

digraph

(DAI-graf) See "ligature."

dot

(DAHT) In Turksh, a dot placed over an upper-case "I" to represent the same sound as a dotted lower-case "i." Turkish also has the letter "I" undotted in both upper-case and lower-case. Examples: Ċ ċ Ė ė Ġ ġ İ i I ı Ż ż.

double acute

(DUH-bl uh-KYOOT) Two "acute accents" or "prime" marks. Placed above the letters "O" and "U." Used in Hungarian and Latvian. Examples: Ő ő Ű ű.

grave accent

(GRAHV or GRAEV AK-sent) A diagonal mark placed above a vowel. Slants from upper left to lower right (the reverse of the "acute accent"). Used in French, Italian, and Ancient Greek. Examples: À à È è Ì ì Ò ò Ù ù.

hachek

(HAH-chek) Looks like an upside-down caret, or a small "v." Placed above vowels and some consonants. Used in Czech, Estonian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Serbo-Croatian, Slovakian, Turkish, as well as Latinized Bulgarian and Macedonian. Examples: Č č Ě ě Ğ ğ Ň ň Ř ř Š š Ž ž.

ligature

(LIH-guh-choor) A character that resembles two letters joined together, as in AE, fl, or OE. Used in Danish, English, French, Icelandic, and Norwegian. Also called "digraph" (DAI-graf). Examples: Æ æ IJ ij Œ œ.

macron

(MAY-krahn or MAH-kruhn) A horizontal mark over a vowel to indicate that the vowel is to be pronounced stressed or long. Used in South Asian languages, Hawaiian, Latvian, and Lithuanian. Examples: Ā ā Ē ē Ī ī Ō ō Ū ū.

ogonek

(OH-goh-nek) A small mark resembling a "cedilla" but reversed, placed beneath a letter. Used in Albanian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Norwegian, Polish, and Turkish. Examples: Ą ą Ę ę Į į Ų ų.

ring

(RIHNG) Hollow circle above a vowel. Used in Czech, Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish. Examples: Å å Ů ů.

stroke

(STROKE) A horizontal or slanted mark. In Icelandic, the stroked letter is called the "edh" (or "eth") and the Icelandic lower-case letter looks like a lower-case "d" tilted to the left with a slanted stroke (ð). The capital "D" has a horizontal stroke across the vertical side. In Polish, the letter "L" ("l") is changed in pronunciation to a "w" sound with the addition of a slanted stroke (as in the word "Łowicza"). Used in Danish, Icelandic, Old English, Norwegian, Polish, and Serbo-Croatian. Examples: Ð ð Đ đ Ħ ħ Ł ł Ø ø Ŧ ŧ.

tilde

(TIL-deh) Placed over a letter to denote the "nyuh" sound (as in the Spanish word "señorita," with the tilde over the n), or over a vowel to indicate nasality (as in the Portuguese word "irmã," with the tilde over the a). Examples: Ã ã Ĩ ĩ Ñ ñ Ũ ũ.

umlaut

(OOM-laut) Two dots placed above a vowel to indicate a partial assimilation to a succeeding sound. Also called diaeresis or dieresis (dai-ER-ih-sis) when placed over a vowel to show that the vowel is pronounced in a separate syllable. Used in Albanian, Estonian, Finnish, French, German, Hungarian, Icelandic, Latvian, Swedish, Slovakian, and Turkish. Examples: Ä ä Ë ë Ï ï Ö ö Ü ü Ÿ ÿ.