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| | '''Isguit "pho" or "phở"? Why Vietnamese diacritics don't belong in English-language writing.''' | | '''Isguit "pho" or "phở"? Why Vietnamese diacritics don't belong in English-language writing.''' |
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| − | # The major U.S. style guides, including ''The Chicago Manual of Style'', APA, AMA, and MLA, recommend Merriam Webster spelling. British style guides recommend Oxford spelling. Both Merriam-Webster and Oxford give Vietnamese names without diacritics, as you can see from the charts below. | + | # The major U.S. style guides, including ''The Chicago Manual of Style'', APA, AMA, and MLA, recommend Merriam-Webster spelling. British style guides recommend Oxford spelling. Both Merriam-Webster and Oxford give Vietnamese names without diacritics, as you can see from the charts below. |
| − | # Other standard library reference works that cover Vietnam also remove the diacritics: ''Britannica'', ''Encyclopedia of the Vietnam War'' (2011), ''Encyclopedia of Modern Asia'' (2002), ''National Geographic Atlas of the World'', and ''Lonely Planet Vietnam''. ''Britannica'' is edited by University of Chicago Press copy editors trained in Chicago style. So an example from ''Britannica'' may provide clear guidance than CMOS itself. | + | # Besides the Merriam-Webster dictionaries, other standard library reference works that cover Vietnam also remove the diacritics: ''Britannica'', ''Encyclopedia of the Vietnam War'' (2011), ''Encyclopedia of Modern Asia'' (2002), ''National Geographic Atlas of the World'', and ''Lonely Planet Vietnam''. ''Britannica'' is edited by University of Chicago Press copy editors trained in Chicago style, which is the most widely admired editing style. |
| | # Go on Amazon and search for "Vietnam" books. I guarantee that no book that comes up in the top twenty will use Vietnamese diacritics in the running text. | | # Go on Amazon and search for "Vietnam" books. I guarantee that no book that comes up in the top twenty will use Vietnamese diacritics in the running text. |
| | # They're "distracting," according to the [http://stylemanual.ngs.org/home/A/accent-marks style guide of National Geographic]. We want readers to focus on the content of the article rather than the style it is written in. | | # They're "distracting," according to the [http://stylemanual.ngs.org/home/A/accent-marks style guide of National Geographic]. We want readers to focus on the content of the article rather than the style it is written in. |