MACRON

A macron is a diacritical mark consisting of a horizontal bar placed above a vowel to indicate that the vowel is long in pronunciation. It appears in several writing systems and transliteration schemes, notably Latin-derived orthographies and languages such as Māori and Hawaiian, where vowel length can change word meaning. In linguistic notation and transliteration schemes like the International Alphabet of Sanskrit Transliteration (IAST), macrons mark long vowels to distinguish them from their short counterparts.

In computing and typography, macrons can be produced as a combining diacritic (U+0304) or as precomposed characters such as ā, ē, ī, ō, ū. They are commonly used in dictionaries, language-learning materials, and scholarly texts to preserve vowel length and guide correct pronunciation.

As a proper noun, Macron most prominently refers to Emmanuel Macron (born 1977), a French politician who has served as President of France since 2017. He founded the centrist movement La République En Marche! (later renamed Renaissance) and has pursued policies emphasizing European integration, economic reform, and centralized governance. He was re-elected for a second term in 2022.

The surname Macron exists independently of the diacritic, and people bearing the name have held public and private roles in various countries. In language contexts, the term macron should not be confused with macro, which refers to a different concept in computing.