Changes

# Other standard reference works that cover Vietnam also remove the diacritics: ''Britannica'',<ref>''[http://www.britannica.com/ Britannica]'' is edited by University of Chicago Press copy editors trained in Chicago style. It has even more entries on Vietnam than the Merriam-Webster dictionaries do. Its style for diacritics was revised in 1974 to take advantage of improvements in printing technology. Merriam-Webster and other publishers adopted this style a few years later, and it is now standard. Pre-1974, the standard style was to use only eight Western European characters with diacritics (originally from International Morse Code). This is still a common style in non-academic writing.</ref> Spencer Tucker's ''Encyclopedia of the Vietnam War'' (2011), ''Encyclopedia of Modern Asia'' (2002), ''National Geographic Atlas of the World'', and ''Lonely Planet Vietnam''.<ref>These were the major works that cover Vietnam that I found in the reference section of the main library in Taipei.</ref>

# Other standard reference works that cover Vietnam also remove the diacritics: ''Britannica'',<ref>''[http://www.britannica.com/ Britannica]'' is edited by University of Chicago Press copy editors trained in Chicago style. It has even more entries on Vietnam than the Merriam-Webster dictionaries do. Its style for diacritics was revised in 1974 to take advantage of improvements in printing technology. Merriam-Webster and other publishers adopted this style a few years later, and it is now standard. Pre-1974, the standard style was to use only eight Western European characters with diacritics (originally from International Morse Code). This is still a common style in non-academic writing.</ref> Spencer Tucker's ''Encyclopedia of the Vietnam War'' (2011), ''Encyclopedia of Modern Asia'' (2002), ''National Geographic Atlas of the World'', and ''Lonely Planet Vietnam''.<ref>These were the major works that cover Vietnam that I found in the reference section of the main library in Taipei.</ref>

# 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 style guide of ''National Geographic''.<ref>[http://stylemanual.ngs.org/home/A/accent-marks National Geographic Style Manual]. "Although Vietnamese is written in the Latin alphabet, the number of accent marks can be distracting and may therefore be omitted."</ref> Style should be as unremarkable as possible so that readers can focus on content.

# They're "distracting," according to the style guide of ''National Geographic'', certainly a publication that knows its diacritics.<ref>[http://stylemanual.ngs.org/home/A/accent-marks National Geographic Style Manual]. "Although Vietnamese is written in the Latin alphabet, the number of accent marks can be distracting and may therefore be omitted."</ref> Style should be as unremarkable as possible so that readers can focus on content.

# ''The Cambridge History of Southeast Asia'' (1993), the top specialist work on Vietnamese history, drops the diacritics.

# ''The Cambridge History of Southeast Asia'' (1993), the top specialist work on Vietnamese history, drops the diacritics.

# Publishers in the English-speaking world who have tried to include Vietnamese diacritics have found that non-Vietnamese copy editors tend to screw them up.<ref>Tucker's ''Encyclopedia'' was originally published in 1998 with diacritics.[http://books.google.com.vn/books?id=Zk8YAAAAIAAJ&focus=] There were complaints that these were done incorrectly.[http://books.google.com.vn/books?id=WLcG5Cdw-NIC&pg=PA503&dq=#v=onepage&q=%22Encyclopedia%20of%20the%20Vietnam%20War%22%20diacritics&f=false] They have been removed from the current (2011) edition of the work.</ref> Of course, this is not an issue for a publisher based in Vietnam itself. In fact, Vietnam has several English-language news sites that are professionally edited, including [http://english.vov.vn/ Voice of Vietnam]. But you won't find diacritics on those sites either.<ref>The major news sites are aggregated by [http://en.baomoi.com/ Bao Moi]. You look up a name on this site and get an overview of how the Vietnamese press handles this issue.</ref> They model conventional language use for the benefit of Vietnamese who are learning English, so they have no interest in promoting Viet-lish.

# Publishers in the English-speaking world who have tried to include Vietnamese diacritics have found that non-Vietnamese copy editors tend to screw them up.<ref>Tucker's ''Encyclopedia'' was originally published in 1998 with diacritics.[http://books.google.com.vn/books?id=Zk8YAAAAIAAJ&focus=] There were complaints that these were done incorrectly.[http://books.google.com.vn/books?id=WLcG5Cdw-NIC&pg=PA503&dq=#v=onepage&q=%22Encyclopedia%20of%20the%20Vietnam%20War%22%20diacritics&f=false] They have been removed from the current (2011) edition of the work.</ref> Of course, this is not an issue for a publisher based in Vietnam itself. In fact, Vietnam has several English-language news sites that are professionally edited, including [http://english.vov.vn/ Voice of Vietnam]. But you won't find diacritics on those sites either.<ref>The major news sites are aggregated by [http://en.baomoi.com/ Bao Moi]. You look up a name on this site and get an overview of how the Vietnamese press handles this issue.</ref> They model conventional language use for the benefit of Vietnamese who are learning English, so they have no interest in promoting Viet-lish.