Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2018 April 14

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April 14

Milos Forman vs. Miloš Forman in English

With the passing of Miloš Forman, it seems that some US news sources are using Milos Forman (NPR would be an example) but some are using Miloš Forman (such as the LA Times). Is one format preferred in US print media? Does this take into account that s and š are different letters in Czech?--12.233.203.202 (talk) 18:16, 14 April 2018 (UTC)

Newspapers in the United States have traditionally been very sparing in their use of diacritic letters. Neither Linotype systems as used in the U.S. during the first 60+ years of the 20th century, nor most of the mainframe and terminal systems used in the first round of computerization in the 1970s and 1980s, encouraged their use (in particular, the Los Angeles Times almost never used diacritics during most of the 1980s). That's how Ahmet Ertegun lost his umlaut when living in the U.S. -- and "ü" (since it occurs in German) is much less exotic than "š" from the U.S. point of view. U.S. journalistic organizations using "š" in his name are taking advantage of today's much less restrictive software and/or showing more international sensitivity than was common in the past... AnonMoos (talk) 04:03, 15 April 2018 (UTC)

See also Baseball Campaign Puts the Accent on Spanish Names (NYT, August 2016) about a campaign to ensure that diacritics are always used for the names of Latino baseball players. The article confesses that "The New York Times has not generally rendered accents for the names of coaches and players in daily coverage of the major North American sports leagues". Alansplodge (talk) 12:08, 15 April 2018 (UTC)

This also likely reflects the growing Hispanic population in the U.S., such that more readers would notice the difference. The percentage of U.S. readers who would notice the difference between s and š is likely in the low single digits. Far more would recognize the difference between n and ñ, and journalists might well get complaints for rendering "año" as "ano." Shock Brigade Harvester Boris (talk) 14:59, 15 April 2018 (UTC)

Agreed, but it would be a bit odd to have a policy of using some diacritics but not others on the basis of popularity. Alansplodge (talk) 15:40, 15 April 2018 (UTC)

I take that back, the NYT hasn't bothered itself with accents in Milos Forman, Oscar-Winning Director of ‘One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,’ Dies at 86 published a few hours ago. Alansplodge (talk) 19:13, 15 April 2018 (UTC)

I don't see an š on my keyboard. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 19:53, 15 April 2018 (UTC)

There is one - š - if you chose Latin in the box next to the word Insert just below the editing field with every use of the edit option. MarnetteD|Talk 19:58, 15 April 2018 (UTC)

Oh good grief you already know that or you wouldn't have been able to leave one in your post. My apologies BB. MarnetteD|Talk 20:01, 15 April 2018 (UTC)

Don't apologize too soon. I simply copied it from the section header. But thanks for the tip on how to post non-English characters. :) ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 20:02, 15 April 2018 (UTC)

Ah a copy/paste solution :-) You are welcome BB. I stumbled upon those alphabet options several years ago but rarely have a chance to use them. Cheers. MarnetteD|Talk 20:41, 15 April 2018 (UTC)

Pretty nifty stuff. Better late than never! ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 21:41, 15 April 2018 (UTC)

Also right above the editing window there is a series of icons and drop down menus, one of them is "Special characters". Some of the options under "Special characters" are "Latin", "Latin extended", "IPA", "Symbols" and so on. Basemetal 13:40, 16 April 2018 (UTC)

For characters you expect to use often it's faster to use keyboard shortcuts. For example I'm picky about writing "El Niño" properly so it helps to know Alt+164 or Alt+0241 is ñ. Shock Brigade Harvester Boris (talk) 22:06, 15 April 2018 (UTC)

In MacOS it's option-n n, and š (with the Extended keyboard) is option-v s. (How do Linucists do it?) —Tamfang (talk) 08:46, 16 April 2018 (UTC)

I suppose they may do what MarnetteD does and what Baseball Bugs just discovered how to do, and what poverty stricken Windowers do... Here I must apologize for one day asking you to type some Sanskrit for me from your nifty Mac, which you kindly did. Later on I discovered there was this other way. Basemetal 13:40, 16 April 2018 (UTC)

I frequently go to another language Wikipedia to copy words or letters which I cannot pick out on an English keyboard. 92.19.169.232 (talk) 14:34, 17 April 2018 (UTC)

Are you a Linucist? Basemetal 14:41, 17 April 2018 (UTC)

No, I'm using a Hewlett Packard 1702 computer with a Peribord-203 keyboard. 92.19.169.232 (talk) 15:02, 17 April 2018 (UTC)