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Re: [MR] Corinthian leather




Poster: Alys of Foxdale <foxdale@wolfstar.com>

> Poster: Tom Rettie <tom@his.com>
> 
> At 01:39 PM 1/3/97 -0500, you wrote:
> 
> >If English used accents, there would be accented letters in our
> >standard character set, just as the French and the Spanish and so on
> >have.
> 
> Standard character set?  Well, all my fonts have accents included.  As do my
> old lettering guides and transfers.  Even my good ol' American keyboard has
> tilde, grave, and circumflex accents right there in front of me.  Sounds
> pretty standard to me.  

When I say "character set," I mean something like ASCII -- American
Standard Code for Information Interchange.  You're confusing "font"
with "character set."  These are not interchangeable.

On your keyboard, which uses a character set (not a font), you have 
the option of using a tilde, "apostrophe," "back-quote," or "caret."
However, you will note that they do not print on your screen in the
same place as any letter you wish to modify with them unless you use
an extended (not standard) character set, or some word processor that
has special fonts or overstrike capabilities.

In your word processor, you have fonts which include letters using not
only the tilde, grave and acute accents, and circumflex, but also
cedilla, umlaut (or dieresis), and all those other ones that you don't
know the names of.

> I think we just disagree on when a "foreign" word becomes "English."  I
> think words like re'sume', passe', and pure'e, being used in everyday speech
> and writing (and included in English dictionaries and thesauruses), are as
> "English" as "sabotage," "guerrilla," and other recent additions.  Not
> English in derivation to be sure, but in usage.
> 
> Your servant,
> 
> Findlaech mac Alasdair

The more Anglicized a word becomes, the less likely it is to have
diacritical marks.  I note just as many cases (if not more) of resume
spelled without the accents.  I see saute spelled far more often
without an accent, and I can't remember the last time I saw puree
spelled with one.  The trend is definitely away from using such marks.

   Alys of Foxdale        | Vert, on a fess between three trees
foxdale@wolfstar.com      |     argent, a fox passant gules.


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