Difference between revisions of "Diacritic"
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| − | All major style guides advise the writer to select a widely available reference work and to follow the spellings given in this work. Now that Unicode is standard, dictionary spellings can be reproduced exactly. Older guidance that suggests dropping off technically difficult diacritics can be disregarded. ''The Chicago Manual of Style'' recommends ''The Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary'', while the Associated Press recommends ''Webster’s New World College Dictionary''. Better known names, for example "Istanbul" or "Zurich," are often spelled without diacritics in English even though the official spelling in the local language includes them. Lesser known names are generally spelled in the manner of the original language. Diacritics are not normally used for sports figures or for Vietnamese names. These are just rules of thumb, and each case should be checked separately in an appropriate reference work. | + | All major style guides advise the writer to select a widely available reference work and to follow the spellings given in this work. Now that Unicode is standard, dictionary spellings, even those with Eastern European diacritics, can be reproduced exactly. Older guidance that suggests dropping off technically difficult diacritics can be disregarded. ''The Chicago Manual of Style'' recommends ''The Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary'', while the Associated Press recommends ''Webster’s New World College Dictionary''. Better known names, for example "Istanbul" or "Zurich," are often spelled without diacritics in English even though the official spelling in the local language includes them. Lesser known names are generally spelled in the manner of the original language. Diacritics are not normally used for sports figures or for Vietnamese names. These are just rules of thumb, and each case should be checked separately in an appropriate reference work. |
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Revision as of 05:14, July 3, 2014
A diacritic is a mark near or through a character that changes its phonetic value or significance. For example, diacritics appear above the vowel in the words "résumé" and "déjà vu." Diacritics are more common in various European languages than they are in English.
These are examples of common diacritics:
- Acute accent (é) - The acute accent is a symbol placed over a vowel in some languages, especially French and Italian.
- Circumflex (^) - An accent placed over a vowel in some languages, especially French and Afrikaans.
- Grave accent (è) - An accent placed over a vowel in some languages, especially French, Italian and Vietnamese.
- Umlaut (or trema) (ü) - An accent, represented by two dots above the vowel, used in some languages, especially German and Afrikaans and Nordic languages like Swedish and Finnish.
Eight upper case characters with diacritics are included in International Morse Code: Ä, Á, Å, Ch, É, Ñ, Ö, and Ü. This system also includes the twenty six characters of the Latin alphabet, ten numerals, and punctuation. It was developed by Friedrich Clemens Gerke in 1848 and adopted as an international standard in 1865. Extended ASCII, an eight-bit encoding standard introduced in 1981 with the IBM PC, has 37 characters with diacritics (both upper case and lower case). "Latin-1," a slightly revised version of this character set, is still in use as a standard for Western European typography. Unicode UTF-16, included in Windows 2000, has many more characters with diacritics as well as an almost unlimited character set.
Correct usage
All major style guides advise the writer to select a widely available reference work and to follow the spellings given in this work. Now that Unicode is standard, dictionary spellings, even those with Eastern European diacritics, can be reproduced exactly. Older guidance that suggests dropping off technically difficult diacritics can be disregarded. The Chicago Manual of Style recommends The Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary, while the Associated Press recommends Webster’s New World College Dictionary. Better known names, for example "Istanbul" or "Zurich," are often spelled without diacritics in English even though the official spelling in the local language includes them. Lesser known names are generally spelled in the manner of the original language. Diacritics are not normally used for sports figures or for Vietnamese names. These are just rules of thumb, and each case should be checked separately in an appropriate reference work.
| Merriam-Webster | American Heritage[1] | Oxford[2] | Webster’s New World[3] | Random House[4] | Encyclopedias | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Collegiate[5] | Biographical[6] | Britannica[7] | Columbia[8] | ||||
| Be•neš, Edvard | Be•neš, Edvard | Be•neš, Eduard | Beneš, Edvard | Beneš, Edvard | Be·neš, Ed·u·ard | Edvard Beneš | Eduard Beneš |
| Koś•ciusz•ko, Tadeusz Andrzei Bonawentura | Koś•ciusz•ko, Tadeusz Andrzei Bonawentura | Kos•ci•uśz•ko or Kos•ci•us•ko, Thaddeus | Kosciusko, Thaddeus | Kosciusko, Thaddeus | Kos·ci·us·ko, Thaddeus | Tadeusz Kościuszko | Thaddeus Kosciusko |
| Mit•ter•rand, François (-Maurice) | N/A | Mit•ter•rand, François Maurice | Mitterrand, François | Mitterrand, François (Maurice) | Mit·ter·rand, Fran·çois (Mau·rice Ma·rie) | François Mitterrand | François Maurice Mitterrand |
| N/A | Ngo Quyen | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A | Ngo Quyen | N/A |
| Tō•jō Hideki | Tōjō Hideki | To•jo, Hideki | Tojo, Hideki | Tojo, Hideki | To·jo, Hi·de·ki | Tōjō Hideki | Tōjō Hideki |
| N/A | Vö•rös•marty, Mihály | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A | Mihály Vörösmarty | Mihály Vörösmarty |
The U.S. Board on Geographic Names sets U.S. government usage in geography. The “conventional” name is the name BGN deems suitable for English language usage. The “approved” name is the official name in the local language.
| Merriam-Webster | American Heritage[1] | Oxford[2] | Webster’s New World[3] | Encyclopedias | U.S. Board on Geographic Names[9] | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Collegiate[5] | Geographical[10] | Britannica[7] | Columbia[8] | Conventional | Approved | ||||
| Is•tan•bul | İs•tan•bul | Is•tan•bul | Istanbul | Istanbul | Istanbul | Istanbul | N/A | İstanbul | |
| Jy•vas•ky•la | Jy•väs•ky•lä | N/A | Jyväskylä | N/A | Jyväskylä | Jyväskylä | N/A | Jyväskylä | |
| Lü•beck | Lü•beck | Lü•beck | Lübeck | Lü•beck | Lübeck | Lübeck | N/A | Lübeck | |
| Plo•iesti or Plo•esti | Plo•ieş•ti or Plo•eş•ti | Plo•ieş•ti or Plo•eş•ti | Ploieşti | Plo•ieş•ti or Plo•eş•ti' | Ploieşti | Ploieşti | N/A | Ploiești | |
| Zu•rich | Zü•rich | Zu•rich | Zurich | Zurich | Zürich | Zürich | N/A | Zürich | |
| Vietnamese towns | |||||||||
| Ho Chi Minh City | Ho Chi Minh City | Ho Chi Minh City Formerly Saigon | Ho Chi Minh City | Ho Chi Minh City | Ho Chi Minh City | Ho Chi Minh City | Ho Chi Minh City | Thành Phố Hồ Chí Minh | |
| Ha·noi | Ha·noi | Hanoi | Hanoi | Hanoi | Hanoi | Hanoi | N/A | Hà Nội | |
| Hai·phong | Hai·phong | Haiphong | Haiphong | Haiphong | Haiphong | Haiphong | N/A | Hải Phòng | |
| Hue | Hue or Hué | Hue | Hué | Hue | Hue | Hue | N/A | Huế | |
Resources on the Web
The following references may be consulted to determine proper spelling, including the correct use of diacritics:
American dictionaries
British dictionaries
Encyclopedias
Sports
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 Oxford Dictionaries
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 Webster’s New World College Dictionary
- ↑ Random House Dictionary
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary
- ↑ Merriam-Webster Biographical Dictionary (1995)
- ↑ 7.0 7.1 Encyclopædia Britannica
- ↑ 8.0 8.1 Columbia Encyclopedia
- ↑ U.S. Board on Geographic Names
- ↑ Merriam-Webster Geographical Dictionary (1997)