Final answer:
Special characters marked with a backslash are known as Escape Characters and are used to represent characters like the newline and tab or to insert characters that cannot be included directly in a string.
Step-by-step explanation:
Special characters marked with a backslash are called Escape Characters. These characters are used in programming to indicate that the following character has a special purpose or interpretation. For instance, the newline character is represented as '\\' in many languages, which is used to move the cursor to the next line. Similarly, '\t' is used for a tab character, and '\\' represents a literal backslash. Escape characters are essential for dealing with special scenarios in strings where direct representation is not possible or would be misunderstood by the compiler or interpreter.