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June 22, 2005
Vishy's Useless Factoid of the Day #13: Dieresis
You may have noticed certain esteemed publications like the New Yorker or Technology Review print cooperation as coöperation and reelect as reëlect and wondered which Martian does their typesetting. Turns out they are are pedantically following the rule of the dieresis in spelling (Brit. diaeresis).
A dieresis usually appears on the second of a sequence of two vowels to indicate that it begins a new syllable. This means that the two vowels should be pronounced as two syllables rather than as one diphthong. This rule of spelling was apparently followed in older English publications, which explains why I have seen it appear in some elegantly typeset Arthur C. Doyle books. The dieresis is easy to miss if you are reading a passage quickly, but chances are you won't miss it if you spell naive as naïve, similar to its French analogue, naïf.
Most publications either ignore the rule of the dieresis entirely and omit it from typesetting. Others put in a hyphen where the syllable break occurs, as in re-elect.
Note that strictly speaking, a dieresis is a different diacritic than the umlaut. It is rendered the same way, but they are semantically and phonologically very different. A well-designed typeface would have umlauts very close to the vowel they modify, but would place dieresis marks over vowels slightly higher than an umlaut in the same font.
Posted by Vishy at June 22, 2005 12:46 AM