Mercha

Mercha is a cantillation mark commonly found in the Torah, Haftarah, and other books that are chanted.
Mercha is a conjunctive who precedes the following disjunctives :

Tifcha
Sof passuk
Munach Legarmeh
Pashta: Only when the mercha and the pashta are followed, without any syllable between them, as in
Zarka: Same rule as the Pashta
Tevir: Only if there is one syllable or less between the mercha and the tevir, as in .

In some codex, when the tevir is not preceded by a darga or a mercha, and has a meteg because of a hateph-vowel, the meteg is then replaced by a mercha, as in
Mercha appears in the Torah 9117 times—the second most of any trope sounds. Only Tipcha occurs more often.
The Aramaic word rtl=yes translates into English as elongation.

Melody

First appearance

Second appearance