Next, a decision must be made whether to transcribe the sound with a diacritic (e.g., [z]) or with the base symbol for the voiceless cognate (e.g., [s]).
Some features are relatively easy to transcribe with familiar the International Phonetic Alphabet base symbols (e.g., [baef] for bath), whereas others may require the use of diacritics (e.g., [mae] for man or [bae:d] for bad).