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Comment by snthpy | Hacker News Reader

How can the New Iork Tymes just choose how they spell things? That's messed up.

These idiosyncrasies are amusing but they do have a habit of dominating the conversation. E.g. the New Yorker (I think) uses diaeresis to represent distinct syllables resulting in words like “Cooperate” being decorated.

Or that chap here who insists on using 5 digit years.

But some go missed. My personal favourite is that I prefer to fully close clauses within quotations.

> The President said, “I will never bomb the moon!”.

The same way they just choose to anglicize Владимир Путин and בִּנְיָמִין נְתַנְיָהוּ, although there are certainly a plenty of much better examples.

The Habsburg Family never used a different writing system, though.

But I bet they used the metric system!

Probably, but only since the 19th century ;)

They did use a different language with different pronunciation rules, though. I'm not convinced that sticking with the original spelling is obviously better. Bibis’s first name certainly doesn't accurately transliterate to Benjamin, and that's probably fine.

They use the name "Habsburg". Who is the NYT to tell them they are in fact not "Habsburg"?

I don't think the NYT is telling them that.

Like the way the French and English write "Cologne" for the city Germans call "Köln". The NYT is just adhering to a different standard, not making up anything new.

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