the Berasit Hebrew Dictionary

This page will explore the phenomena of the frequent insertion in the ancient Hebrew texts of vowels with no apparent semantic value.

for example xedeq is often spelled 'xediq' or 'xedok' expand on this

Similarly, and with much more interesting and critical consequences is aleh/aloh

A similar phenomenon exists in other languages. For example consider the word “choose” or “drink” in English or Dutch.

By extension, this tradition may have evolved into diacritics