Apices are usually thinner than the lines that compose the letters on which they stand. They appear in both
epigraphic and
palaeographic texts, although they are not always included in transcriptions. An apex was initially not used over ; instead, the letter is
written taller (as a "long i"), as in (Lūciī A. fīliī) in the next illustration. However, by the 2nd century AD even this long I was given an apex, and the apex could thus appear over all of the Latin vowels. Other markers of long vowels are attested, such as the reduplication of the vowel and the use of for long /i/ in archaic epigraphy, but the apex was the standard vowel-length indicator in classical times. The grammarian
Quintilian wrote that apices are necessary when a difference of quantity in a vowel changes the meaning of a word, as in
malus and
málus, but recommended against including them otherwise, as he believed that the presence of long vowels was otherwise obvious to everyone. Terentius Scaurus had a similar recommendation. Long vowels were never indicated consistently; writers most often marked them in grammatical endings, to avoid visual confusion with other letters, and to denote phrasal units. == Identification with the sicilicus ==