# Staccato (Italian, "detached")

Source: https://arcosounds.com/glossary/staccato

**Staccato shortens a note, notated with a dot above or below the notehead, so it sounds for roughly half its written value and is followed by silence.**

On strings, staccato is produced by stopping the bow on the string rather than lifting it, the stroke starts, sounds, and stops with the hair still in contact, which is what gives orchestral staccato its grip. Several staccato notes taken in one bow direction, each stopped and restarted, is the stroke called slurred staccato or louré staccato.

Staccato is often confused with spiccato, which bounces off the string, and with martelé, which uses a sharp initial bite. The distinction matters because the three sound different at every dynamic: staccato stays weighted and articulate, spiccato is light and airy, and martelé is aggressive.

Canonical source: https://arcosounds.com/glossary/staccato