This paper is concerned with the diffraction of a Rayleigh surface wave by an edge crack included at an arbitrary angle to the free surface of a half‐space. The corresponding problem for a normal edge crack was studied in [B. Q. Vu and V. K. Kinra, J. Acoust. Soc. Am.77, 1425–1430 (1985)]. The scattered field was measured on the free surface both in the vicinity of the crack and far away from it. The nearfield possesses a number of interesting features which can be used to characterize an inclined crack. The farfield transmission and reflection coefficients,ATandAR, respectively, were measured under both the steady time‐harmonic motion (tone burst) and the transient motion (spectroscopy) of the half‐space. All three regions of interest were studied: wavelengths large, equal, and small compared to the crack lengths. As expected, in the short‐wavelength limit,ARasymptotically reaches its frequency‐independent limit which is the reflection coefficient of an infinite wedge. This limit was found to agree very well with the earlier results by Viktorov for a wedge [I. A. Viktorov,RayleighWavesandLambWaves—PhysicalTheoryandApplication(Plenum, New York, 1964)]. The transmission coefficient exhibits an oscillatory dependence on frequency; this is attributed to a resonance between the crack tip and the free surface. The spacing between the peaks ofATwas found to satisfy the following simple kinematic condition: wavelength equals twice the crack length. Furthermore,ATwas found to be measurably identical for two complementary cracks of inclination θ and π−θ, where θ is measured from the free surface.