Staccato
A dot above or below a note head means staccato: the note is played short and detached from the next.
Easily confused with
How to read it
The note is sounded and then at once released. How short depends on the instrument: Gehrkens (1914) notes that organists often hold a staccato note for about half its written value.
Look-alikes
A dot after a note, to its right, is a dot of length and makes the note longer, the opposite effect. A small wedge or dash above the note is staccatissimo, “very detached”.
Dot or dash?
Sources from around 1900 disagree on which mark is the real staccato. Gehrkens (1914), Evans (1909) and Elson (1905) give the dot, with the wedge-shaped dash as a sharper, rarer staccatissimo. Stainer and Barrett’s dictionary (1898) says the reverse: the dash is the staccato sign, and the dot is more properly the sign of spiccato, which is played less short.
More music symbols
Sources
- Music Notation and Terminology, Karl W. Gehrkens, 1914, A. S. Barnes Company (Project Gutenberg), Chapter V, §52–53
- Primer of Facts about Music, M. G. Evans, 1909, Theodore Presser Co. (Internet Archive, University of Toronto), Q. 100
- Elson's Music Dictionary, Louis C. Elson, 1905, Oliver Ditson Company (Internet Archive, Cornell University Library), Signs
- Stainer and Barrett's Dictionary of Musical Terms, John Stainer and W. A. Barrett, new and revised edition, 1898, Novello (Internet Archive, Cornell University Library), Staccato
- SMuFL: Articulation, Standard Music Font Layout, glyph table U+E4A0–U+E4BF, W3C Music Notation Community Group, U+E4A2, U+E4A6
Last reviewed September 26, 2026 by Rory Hansen. How we research