My latest article for The Week is on accented characters, like ü and é. They’re not officially part of English spelling, but they just don’t go away. And in spite of some people’s uncoöperativeness, I don’t think they’re going to go away, either.
In the future, will the English language be full of accented characters?
Posted in The Week
Tagged accented letters, accents, special characters, spelling, The Week
I’ve recently done a presentation and a webinar on handling words from other languages in English context. (If you’d like me to present it – or another topic – for your organization, ask about my availability!) For it, I created a handout that’s a handy reference for word people. I’ve decided to make it available for everyone. So here it is!
Posted in editing, language and linguistics
Tagged diacritical marks, diacritics, language, special characters, typography
Do you always get your accents and special characters right in non-English words? Or are you sometimes unclear on which is which, and maybe not sure what difference it makes?
Well, lucky you. I spent quite a bit of time recently putting together charts for a presentation I took part in at the 2018 Editors Canada conference. They list the most common ones, some of the languages you’re likely to see them in, and the kinds of differences they can make – cases where the presence or lack of a little mark can turn something innocent into something dirty (or vice versa, which is sometimes even worse).
Here they are. It’s a PDF, but it’s small: accents_characters_harbeck.pdf
Posted in editing, language and linguistics
Tagged accents, characters, diacritics, letters, special characters, typography
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