User:PeterKa/Diacritics proposal

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Is it "pho" or "phở"? Why Vietnamese diacritics don't belong in English-language writing.

  1. The major U.S. style guides, including The Chicago Manual of Style,[1] APA,[2] AMA, and MLA,[3] recommend Merriam-Webster spelling. British style guides recommend Oxford spelling.[4] Both Merriam-Webster and Oxford give Vietnamese names without diacritics. Merriam-Webster Geographic Dictionary, recommended by CMOS,[5] has well over fifty Vietnamese place names. So this treatment is not restricted to well-known or "anglicized" names.
  2. Other standard reference works that cover Vietnam also remove the diacritics: Britannica, Encyclopedia of the Vietnam War (2011), Encyclopedia of Modern Asia (2002), National Geographic Atlas of the World, and Lonely Planet Vietnam. Britannica is edited by University of Chicago Press copy editors trained in Chicago style, which is the most widely admired editing style.[6]
  3. Go on Amazon and search for "Vietnam" books. I guarantee that no book that comes up in the top twenty will use Vietnamese diacritics in the running text.
  4. They're "distracting," according to the style guide of National Geographic.[7] The idea of style is that readers should focus on the content of an article rather than the style it is written in.
  5. The Cambridge History of Southeast Asia (1993), the top specialist work on Vietnamese history, also drops the diacritics.
  6. English-language news sites based in Vietnam, including Voice of Vietnam, generally drop the diacritics.[8] The content of these sites represent news translated from Vietnamese, so there is no technical barrier that would prevent them from using diacritics.
  7. Who puts Vietnamese diacritics in English-language material? Besides Wikipedia,[9] there's Thế Giới Publishers in Hanoi. This company publishes old-style war propaganda. Tourists can buy these antiques and show the goofy writing to their friends back home. If a Vietnamese publisher expects English-speakers to actually read a book or periodical, the diacritics are dropped.

Wikipedia RFC

Should our guidelines on diacritics and spelling be rewritten to reflect the recommendations of major style books?

Executive Summary: Wikipedia guidelines recommend resolving diacritic and style issues by doing a Google Book search in order to determine “general usage.” This is an “invented here” approach not recommended by any published style guide. It is also laborious when it done correctly (as it rarely is) and is easily manipulated by partisans. The current proposal would revise the guideline to emphasize the use of reference works, in line with the recommendations of the major style guides.

Wikipedia is built on the idea that our article on Foo should reflect what reliable sources have to say about Foo. By the same logic, our guideline on diacritics should reflect what published style guides have to say about this subject. No guide advises editors to “follow the general usage in reliable sources,” do a Google Book search, and count how many books use a diacritic and how many don't. GBooks isn't structured to do this type of research, and counting diacritics is an unusual skill with application only on Wikipedia. As for Ngram, it may be able to tell you which name is more common or which spelling is more common. But it doesn't detect diacritics with any accuracy.

We need guidance that is short, sweet, and based on the advise of style specialists. All the major guides recommend that editors consult a widely available reference work, preferably a general purpose dictionary from a major publisher. The current guideline includes the parenthetical clause "including other encyclopedias and reference works." This clause suggests that editors are already permitted to follow the approach outlined below. But it needs to be made clear that this is the preferred approach, the one the experts recommend. The guides recommend various dead tree dictionaries for use as a first reference. But their online counterparts obviously make more sense for our purposes.

I propose replacing the following standard for diacritics:

Issues concerning style, spelling, and diacritics may be resolved by consulting a widely available English-language reference work. Online dictionaries are available from American Heritage, Collins, Merriam-Webster, Oxford, Random House, and Webster's New World College Dictionary. Encyclopedia Britannica and Columbia Encyclopedia may also be consulted.

The Chicago Manual of the Style recommends Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary (for American spelling), Merriam-Webster’s Geographical Dictionary (for place names), and Merriam-Webster’s Biographical Dictionary (for personal names). The Associated Press Stylebook recommends Webster’s New World College Dictionary. The Oxford Style Manual recommends The Concise Oxford Dictionary (for British spelling) and The Dictionary of National Biography (for the names of British individuals).

Here are some examples:

Wikipedia Merriam-Webster American Heritage[10] Oxford[11] Webster’s New World[12] Random House[13] Encyclopedias
Collegiate[14] Biographical[15] Britannica[16] Columbia[17]
Edvard Beneš Be•neš, Edvard Be•neš, Edvard Be•neš, Eduard Beneš, Edvard Beneš, Edvard Be·neš, Ed·u·ard Edvard Beneš Eduard Beneš
Tadeusz Kościuszko Koś•ciusz•ko, Tadeusz Andrzei Bonawentura Koś•ciusz•ko, Tadeusz Andrzei Bonawentura Kos•ci•uśz•ko or Kos•ci•us•ko, Thaddeus Kosciusko, Thaddeus Kosciusko, Thaddeus Kos·ci·us·ko, Thaddeus Tadeusz Kościuszko Thaddeus Kosciusko
François Mitterrand Mit•ter•rand, François (-Maurice) N/A Mit•ter•rand, François Maurice Mitterrand, François Mitterrand, François (Maurice) Mit·ter·rand, Fran·çois (Mau·rice Ma·rie) François Mitterrand François Maurice Mitterrand
Ngô Quyền N/A Ngo Quyen N/A N/A N/A N/A Ngo Quyen N/A
Hideki Tojo Tō•jō Hideki Tōjō Hideki To•jo, Hideki Tojo, Hideki Tojo, Hideki To·jo, Hi·de·ki Tōjō Hideki Tōjō Hideki
Mihály Vörösmarty N/A Vö•rös•marty, Mihály N/A N/A N/A N/A Mihály Vörösmarty Mihály Vörösmarty

The U.S. Board on Geographic Names sets U.S. government usage in geography. The atlases and gazetteers generally get the names they use from BGN, although they may adjust them to fit their house styles. The “conventional” name is the name BGN deems suitable for English language usage. The “approved” name is the official name in the local language (or official Romanization if the local script is non-Latin). Although I used the chart to focus on difficult cases, it is common for all the references, including Wikipedia, to be in agreement, as you can see here. In other words, the way editors currently determine article titles is much closer to the proposed method than to the GBook counting approach.

Wikipedia Merriam-Webster American Heritage[10] Oxford[11] Webster’s New World[12] Encyclopedias U.S. Board on Geographic Names[18]
Collegiate[14] Geographical[19] Britannica[16] Columbia[17] Conventional Approved
Istanbul Is•tan•bul İs•tan•bul Is•tan•bul Istanbul Istanbul Istanbul Istanbul N/A İstanbul
Jyväskylä Jy•vas•ky•la Jy•väs•ky•lä N/A Jyväskylä N/A Jyväskylä Jyväskylä N/A Jyväskylä
Kinmen Que•moy Que•moy Que•moy In Pinyin Jin•men N/A N/A Quemoy Island Quemoy Quemoy Jinmen Dao
Lübeck Lü•beck Lü•beck Lü•beck Lübeck Lü•beck Lübeck Lübeck N/A Lübeck
Ploiești Plo•iesti or Plo•esti Plo•ieş•ti or Plo•eş•ti Plo•ieş•ti or Plo•eş•ti Ploieşti Plo•ieş•ti or Plo•eş•ti' Ploieşti Ploieşti N/A Ploiești
Zürich Zu•rich Zü•rich Zu•rich Zurich Zurich Zürich Zürich N/A Zürich
Vietnamese towns
Ho Chi Minh City Ho Chi Minh City Ho Chi Minh City Ho Chi Minh City Formerly Saigon Ho Chi Minh City Ho Chi Minh City Ho Chi Minh City Ho Chi Minh City Ho Chi Minh City Thành Phố Hồ Chí Minh
Hanoi Ha·noi Ha·noi Hanoi Hanoi Hanoi Hanoi Hanoi N/A Hà Nội
Haiphong Hai·phong Hai·phong Haiphong Haiphong Haiphong Haiphong Haiphong N/A Hải Phòng
Cần Thơ Can Tho Can Tho N/A N/A N/A Can Tho Can Tho N/A Cần Thơ
Da Nang Da Nang Da Nang Da Nang or Da·nang Da Nang Da Nang Da Nang Da Nang N/A Đa Năng
Biên Hòa Bien Hoa Bien Hoa also Bien-hoa] N/A Bien Hoa Bien Hoa Bien Hoa Bien Hoa N/A Biên Hòa
Huế Hue Hue Hue Hué Hue Hue Hue N/A Huế

References

  1. ↑ Chicago Manual of the Style, p. 350. “For general matters of spelling, the University of Chicago Press recommends using...Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary."
    CMOS, p. 350. “Although the University of Chicago press uses Webster as its spelling authority, the use of other standard dictionaries such as the American Heritage Dictionary and the Random House Dictionary of the English Language is also acceptable.”
    CMOS, p. 387. “For the names of well-known deceased persons, Chicago generally follows the spelling in Merriam-Webster’s Biographical Dictionary or the biographical section of Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary.”
  2. ↑ American Psychological Association, "APA Style", "The APA Publication Manual recommends Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary (2005) as the standard spelling reference."
  3. ↑ Gibaldi, Joseph, MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers (2003), p. 61. "Your instructor will probably recommend a standard American dictionary such as The American Heritage College Dictionary, Merriam Webster Collegiate Dictionary, or Random House Webster College Dictionary."
  4. ↑ Oxford Style Manual, p. 160. “The best advise is to treat any one item consistently within a given text and follow the newest edition of a suitable dictionary, such as the Concise Oxford Dictionary.”
  5. ↑ CMOS, p. 403, “For the spelling of names of places, consult Merriam-Webster’s Geographic Dictionary.”
  6. ↑ Britannica created its current diacritics style for its 1974 edition. Merriam Webster and other publishers adopted the same style a few years later. Pre-1974, the standard style was to use only Western European (Latin-1) diacritics. This is still a common style in non-academic writing.
  7. ↑ National Geographic Style Manual. "Although Vietnamese is written in the Latin alphabet, the number of accent marks can be distracting and may therefore be omitted."
  8. ↑ These sites are aggregated by Bao Moi.
  9. ↑ Vietnam-related titles were moved to diacritic forms en masse soon after I was banned.
  10. ↑ 10.0 10.1 American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language
  11. ↑ 11.0 11.1 Oxford Dictionaries
  12. ↑ 12.0 12.1 Webster’s New World College Dictionary
  13. ↑ Random House Dictionary
  14. ↑ 14.0 14.1 Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary
  15. ↑ Merriam-Webster Biographical Dictionary (1995)
  16. ↑ 16.0 16.1 Encyclopædia Britannica
  17. ↑ 17.0 17.1 Columbia Encyclopedia
  18. ↑ U.S. Board on Geographic Names
  19. ↑ Merriam-Webster Geographical Dictionary (1997)
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