What are these marks that sometimes appear above kanji/kana?


I've seen these comma-like marks above kanji/kana in Japanese novels a few
times, but I have no idea what they're called or their purpose:

![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/lsvVp.png)

I tried looking online and I haven't found anything (it's pretty hard to find
out when I don't even know what they're called).

I've seen them appear in various contexts before, once I saw it in a novel
where the speaker was announcing someone's name (in a formal setting), another
time I saw it in a different novel when the speaker was in despair and they
were talking about giving up on everything.

I'm very curious about this, can anyone explain what these marks are?




I don't know what they are called, someone else can answer to that. But those
marks are for emphasis. It's the traditional equivalent of underlining, or
bolding, or setting in italics. It can also be used in a situation where, in
English, we might use an exclamation point (though those do exist in Japanese
now).

If you wanted to look it up, I would suggest looking up something on emphasis
and typesetting when printing material in Japanese.

So, in this case, it's like saying " **They couldn't do it!** "

