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The letter ё is a distinct character in the Cyrillic alphabet.

1. Pronunciation:
At the beginning of a word, after a vowel, or after the soft sign (ь) and hard sign (ъ), it sounds like 'yo' (e.g., ёлка, моё, пьёт, съёмка). After most consonants, it indicates that the consonant is 'soft' (palatalized) and the vowel sound is 'o'.

Note: After the hushing consonants ж, ш, ч, and щ, the letter ё is pronounced as 'o'. Remember that ж and ш are always hard (e.g., жёлтый, шёл), while ч and щ are always soft (e.g., чёрный, щёлочь).

2. The Stress Rule:
In the vast majority of Russian words, the syllable containing ё carries the primary stress. This helps you know exactly where to put the emphasis. However, there are rare exceptions in compound words (like трёхэтажный) or foreign loanwords (like сёрфингист) where it may not carry the primary stress.

3. The E to Ё Shift:
In many Russian words, the letter е changes to ё when the stress shifts onto that syllable during inflection. You will see this often when forming the plural of nouns (e.g., сестра becomes сёстры).

4. The 'Invisible' Dots:
In standard Russian books, newspapers, and websites, the dots are usually omitted, and the letter is written as е. However, the pronunciation remains 'yo'. You will see the dots consistently in:

• Books for children
• Textbooks for Russian learners
• Dictionaries
• Official documents to avoid legal confusion between names like Артём and Артем.
• Standard texts whenever omitting it would change the meaning of the word or cause ambiguity (e.g., все - everyone vs. всё - everything, узнаем - we will find out vs. узнаём - we are finding out, небо - sky vs. нёбо - palate).

For alphabetical sorting in dictionaries and lists, ё and е are usually treated as the same letter. However, if two words are identical except for this letter, the word with е comes first (e.g., все comes before всё).

5. Common Grammatical Appearances:
You will frequently encounter ё in:

• Second-person singular and other verb endings (идёшь, идёт).
• Diminutive suffixes (котёнок - kitten).
• The neuter gender for certain nouns (бельё - laundry).
• The masculine past tense of consonant-stem verbs (e.g., нёс, шёл).
• The stressed instrumental case ending for feminine nouns ending in -я (e.g., семьёй) and masculine/neuter nouns (e.g., словарём).
• Pronouns (e.g., моё, твоё, своё, её, о чём, нём).
• Russian surnames (e.g., Горбачёв, Соловьёв). Because the dots are often dropped in media, foreigners frequently mispronounce these names.