English alphabet
Sometimes, especially in older writing, diacritics are used to show the syllables of a word: cursed (verb) is pronounced with one syllable, while cursèd (adjective) is pronounced with two. È is used widely in poetry, e.g. in Shakespeare's sonnets. J.R.R. Tolkien uses ë, as in O wingëd crown. Similarly, while in chicken coop the letters -oo- represent a single vowel sound (a digraph), in outdated spellings such as zoölogist and coöperation, they represent two.  This use of the diaeresis is rarely seen, but is still used in the 2000s in some publications, such as MIT Technology Review and The New Yorker.