Spurious "Quotes" and Apostrophe's

M. Lynne Murphy M_Lynne_Murphy at BAYLOR.EDU
Sun Sep 19 14:17:15 UTC 1999


Last I noticed, the _New Yorker_ used the diaeresis in places where two
vowels are next to one another in a word but separately pronounced.  British
spelling, in my experience, tends to hyphenate these things (like
"re-examine" and "co-operate").

Lynne
----------
>From: Pafra & Scott Catledge <scplc at GS.VERIO.NET>
>To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
>Subject: Re: Spurious "Quotes" and Apostrophe's
>Date: Sun, Sep 19, 1999, 8:44 AM
>

>When I was in elementary school, we were taught to use a diaeresis over the
>second
>e in a word such as ree"valuation or over the o in coo"peration; several
>years later my 6th grade teacher responded to a question about umlauts, "The
>correct word in English is "diaeresis."  Just English is a Germanic language
>does not mean that we speak German here!"   I have not seen a diaeresis in
>nontechnical writing since junior high (I consider the " in Noe"l to be a
>trema--it is after all a French word).  What a difference a half-century can
>make in a language.



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