Accents in Am. English

[Lyons, Jennifer M]

Well, it's a pet peeve, although that's wearing off.  Most people don't know
how to type accents on their computer, and so, more often than not, the
words go without.  However, if someone's handwriting a word with accents and
leaves them off, I still get a little annoyed.

More annoying, and more confusing, is the fact that people don't know the
difference between fiance (see, I don't even know how to type the accents on
a Windows machine - I learned them all on the Mac, where I wrote several
years' worth of essays in French) and fiancee.

Jen

-----Original Message-----
From: A. Vine [mailto:avine at ENG.SUN.COM]

Would any of you mark a word wrong which lacks the accents that it had in
its
originating language, e.g. resume, cafe, fiance?

Would you think that the word is missing its accents and is therefore harder
to
understand?

If you saw the word "resumé" (the last letter is 'e' with an acute accent)
would
you think, hey, it's missing the other accent?

Do any of you care?  Is it anyone's pet peeve?