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johnyzee

WTF is with the "coördinated" umlaut... Seriously the New Yorker works hard to earn their monocled caricature.

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diaeresis_(diacritic)

Indicates that the two o's are separate syllables.

In French. It's long since disappeared from English, even in words like "naive".

It's pointless in English because we have nothing remotely close to phonetic spelling.

If we want to bring back cool things from French can we start with reverting to spellings like "connexion", "reflexion" etc.?

It hasn’t disappeared. You’re literally commenting on an example of it being used in English.

It isn't used in English in any context other than writing published in the New Yorker... except for the word "naive" (and "naif"), where it is still sometimes used. The criticism of the New Yorker is well founded.

I’ve never been published in the New Yorker, and I use it. People with the names Chloë, Zoë, etc. might be surprised to hear they have been imagining their names too.

It’s in use. It hasn’t disappeared. It’s not the norm, but it is definitely still in use.

Girls' names can hardly be considered "English". I've seen all of Chloé, Aimée, Zoé etc. There are no rules.

It was hard for me to type those on my English keyboard. That's reason enough for me to say they are not really part of English any more and haven't been for decades. I do like writing connexion sometimes, and I note that this isn't even considered a spelling error in my installed dictionary, unlike coördinate, but I'm not going to claim that it's "still in use" because I read a dictionary one time.

> I'm not going to claim that it's "still in use" because I read a dictionary one time.

It’s not “still in use” because it’s in the dictionary.

It’s “still in use” because it’s still in use.

Coöperate. And coordinate, etc. Also mostly seen in the New Yorker these days due to their style guide, but occasionally elsewhere.

They have used an umlaut on the second repeated vowel in a word for as long as I've been reading. I can't find a link but I believe that's part of their style guide

Is this an april fools joke?

It's not. They've always done it.

Well, no, they've always used diaereses, but they've never had a policy of marking them on "the second repeated vowel in a word". You don't see them writing about boöks.

Based on your other comments, you probably already understand this correctly, but for others who might be confused, the actual policy is not that it goes on repeated vowels, but that it goes on the second vowel in a pair to make clear that it starts another syllable. Under this policy, coöperate and naïve get diaereses, but books never would (unless you were somehow trying to indicate a special case where it was pronounced with two syllables). Here's more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diaeresis_(diacritic)

Yes, because that's not what they're doing.

I said that. I responded to a comment that said they have always "used an umlaut on the second repeated vowel in a word". Is this somehow a problem with my comment?

You were unclear. nkurz explained it well.

It is not, in fact, an umlaut, but a diaeresis, which has the same shape but a different linguistic purpose.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diaeresis_(diacritic)

In fact, the lede paragraph of the Wikipedia article notes its retention by The New Yorker manual of style, despite being considered archaic.

Direct cited source: https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/the-curse-of-...

You’re supposed to do that for any word where two consecutive vowels have a syllable break between them instead of forming a dipthong. Of course, most of the time it’s redundant because there’s only one cromulent word anyway and the reader can figure it out quickly enough without the umlaut.

I think "supposed to" is overstating it given that I've only ever seen it used by this one publication. To boot, I wouldn't pronounce the word they use it for, coordination, (in context, "piloting it demanded constant coordination") with a syllable break, either.

The Economist and MIT Technology Review, off the top of my head, use the diaresis as well.

That is not true of either publication:

https://www.technologyreview.com/2025/05/22/1117294/a-new-at...

> It’s the third-dimensional counterpart to latitude and longitude, says Sanchez, who helps coordinate the standardization effort.

https://www.technologyreview.com/2024/12/09/1108076/satellit...

> Now, the scientists were poised to catch this reentry as it happened.

https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2018/12/11/america-...

> The compact is far from perfect. It is vague about how countries should cooperate on many issues, such as border management and access to public services.

The New Yorker is famous for its commitment to unreality on this issue. It's only the New Yorker.

It’s true that most Americans are lazy and do not pay sufficient attention in school. Thus the observation of nuances such as this are becoming rarer every day.

Do you pronounce the “oo” in “coordination” the same way as you do in “bookkeeper”? Because that is a very weird mispronunciation. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/coordination

For this rule, the word I see most often is "naïve". I used to write it that way but now I use the simple spelling of "naive". The diaeresis emphasizes that "naive" does not rhyme with "dive", "five", "hive", "jive", etc.

> The diaeresis emphasizes that "naive" does not rhyme with "dive", "five", "hive", "jive", etc.

It can't emphasize that; there's nothing to suggest that "naive" would rhyme with those words. It emphasizes that it doesn't rhyme with "glaive" and "waive"...

Rather than "You're supposed to...", it would be more accurate to say, "It was once a common convention—that has since mostly been abandoned and is retained as a general rule only in a small minority of publications, of which the New Yorker is the most notable—to..."

the monocle gives them permission

The New Yorker does it because it needs to project an air of sophistication, even though it's basically The Atlantic with cartoons and a NYC-local bias. It's no New York Review of Books.

It's a similar kind of conservative affectation as The New York Times referring to people as "Mr. Putin" or "Mrs. Clinton". I find it hilarious that the NYT will never refer to someone by their first name, even when it's contextually more apt to do so, and will often use a stiffly formal version of their full name ("Vladimir V. Putin") that nobody else in the world bothers with outside encyclopedias.

What meaning of conservative? Because the deep south has that affectation too. Everyone is mister or Mrs or Mz (my favorite by far). When talking to a child about someone it's Mr. Given Name. In polite company when discussing a non-mutual acquaintance of some regard, it might revert to Mrs. Surname.

I am also constantly called sir and I cannot say "ma'am" like the people out here so I don't bother with that frivolity. They also say "no" with extra vowels that are somewhat silent, like noueh, it ends more in the nose than a normal "no"

So that's the link I drew.

The examples you give are not written media. If you look at newspapers in the deep south, I'm willing to bet that they're not referring to people as "Mr" and "Mrs" (and a quick check seems to confirm this).

Secondly, the NYT is not in the deep south and doesn't abide by local conventions, so it stands out relative to its peers (e.g. LA Times, etc.).

Conservative in the meaning of not changing lightly. Conserving the current state (which for English style in the New Yorker is now rather old style, but why change?)

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