It’s actually a lot of trouble, these days, to get the diaeresis to stick over the vowel.
The New Yorker may be the only publication in America that uses it regularly. Most of the English-speaking world finds the diaeresis inessential. A diaeresis always goes over the second vowel, and it means that the vowel is leading off a separate syllable.Ī diaeresis is a mark placed over a vowel to indicate that the vowel is pronounced in a separate syllable-as in 'naïve' or 'Brontë'. In German, if an umlaut appears in a combination of two vowels, it will go over the first vowel, and it indicates something important: a plural, say. Often mistakenly called an umlaut, a diaeresis (pronounced “die heiresses” it’s from the Greek for “divide,” and is devilishly hard to spell) consists of two dots carefully centered over the second vowel in such words as “naïve” and “reëlection.” An umlaut is a German thing that alters the pronunciation of a vowel (Brünnhilde) and often changes the meaning of a word: schon (adv.), already schön (adj.), beautiful. There is one other way to keep the “cow” out of “co-workers”: where two vowels rub up against each other, a diaeresis may be used instead of a hyphen. If you’re reading something and you encounter a diaeresis, chances are you’re reading The New Yorker. Among other things, her book demystifies one of the most puzzling marks a reader is likely to encounter: the diaeresis. She is the author of Between You & Me: Confessions of a Comma Queen. Mary Norris began working at The New Yorker in 1978 and spent more than three decades as a copy editor, where she worked with celebrated writers Philip Roth, Pauline Kael, and George Saunders.
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