Abjad and Vowel Marks
Vowel marks are small signs written above or below the consonantal line to show which vowel follows a letter — and in most everyday texts they are simply left out.
An unvocalised text is not silent about vowels; it is ambiguous about them. The Arabic skeleton k-t-b can be read as 'he wrote', 'it was written', 'books' or 'scribe', depending on the vowels. Most of the time grammar and context pick the right reading — but where a wrong reading would matter, the marks come in.
Arabic marks the three short vowels with harakat: a small stroke above the letter, fatha, for a; a stroke below, kasra, for i; and a small comma-like damma above for u. A sukun declares that a letter has no vowel at all, a shadda doubles the consonant, and tanwin endings add a final n-sound to indefinite nouns.
Hebrew solved the same problem later and more elaborately. Between the seventh and ninth centuries CE the Masoretes of Tiberias devised the niqqud — a grid of dots and dashes placed under, inside and above the letters — to fix the traditional pronunciation of the biblical text without altering a single consonant.
On narrow screens, swipe or scroll the plate sideways.
Both systems postdate their scripts by many centuries, and both sit outside the letter line. That is the point: the marks are a commentary layer that can be printed or omitted without touching the text itself. A vocalised edition and an unvocalised one contain exactly the same letters.
Full vocalisation survives where precision is non-negotiable: the Qur'an and study Bibles, children's primers, language textbooks, dictionaries and much poetry. Newspapers, novels, letters and street signs drop the marks, because fluent readers neither need nor want the extra ink.
Older than any mark is the habit of matres lectionis — using the consonants alif, waw and ya, or their Hebrew equivalents, to hint at long vowels. It is a partial fix, older than pointing, and it is built into the spelling of ordinary words today.
Further reading