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February 05, 2004

Comments

Kathy

Re: accent aigu--I copied-and-pasted part of that comment from a WordPerfect document. Maybe that will work for you.

Bookish Gardener

Great tip - it works! "Chacun à son goût". Even got that funky umlauted ÿ for "Roseraie de l'Haÿ". (Interesting that this doesn't work with inserted "multinational" characters from Word...further evidence of the inherent superiority of WordPerfect...but I digress.) Thank you thank you!

Kathy

I have just started reading Word Freak by Stefan Fatsis, which is about competitive Scrabble. One of the players is described as wearing a t-shirt that says, "Does anal retentive have a hyphen?" I think I would improve that t-shirt by putting "God is in the details" on the front and the hyphen question on the back. I didn't even realize that rose bush had an umlaut because I have seen it without more than with.

Bookish Gardener

Print me up one of them t-shirts, 'cause it's singing my tune. You're right--frequently the umlaut is omitted altogether, and often when the umlaut is used, it's used on the wrong vowel (the a instead of the y). Not that I'm anal-retentive about it or anything.
: D

Alicia

Most versions of Windows have a feature where you can open a command prompt and type "charmap," and a table of unusual letters with accents and symbol letters like ©,® and ™ can be copied. I have found most of the letters I need there. Good luck!

Bookish Gardener

That's very good to know--thanks for the tip, Alicia!

Kathy

I knew about that, too--sorry I didn't think to mention it. You can get to it (in Win98) by Start menu > Programs > Accessories > System tools. Alicia's way is faster. But I use Character Map all the time in MasterCook to get the degree symbol, so I put it on my Quick Launch toolbar where it's handy. It also helps to know what font you're typing in.

Bookish Gardener

I love it! "Learning through blogging." Interestingly, the character map terms the ÿ character "Latin small letter y with diaeresis"--which definitely describes it better than "umlauted". So many words, so little brain capacity!

john massengale

"Chacun a son goût" means "each one HAS his own taste." Putting an accent on the à changes "has" to "to." It's not necessary.

Chan S.

Interesting, John, and I see what you mean--but I've always thought of the saying as "each *to* his own taste". I say send it to Word Court (or some such)! Cheers.

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