> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On
> Behalf Of Anto'nio Martins-Tuva'lkin
> Sent: Saturday, July 03, 2004 7:28 AM
> On 2004.07.02, 21:53, Mike Ayers <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> >> On the other hand, maybe "Ha Tinh" is just lazy typography.
> >
> > From National Geographic? Medoubts. This is a deliberate removal
> > of the diacritics unfamiliar to English readers, and is a
> > traditional way to present foreign words.
>
> It is lazy typography, then. "Deliberate", "traditional" and lazy. ;-)
No. "Lazy" implies not doing something to avoid doing the work. This is not the case here. It's an accessibility issue.
> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On
> Behalf Of Anto'nio Martins-Tuva'lkin
> Sent: Saturday, July 03, 2004 12:37 PM
> Pray tell, why so? Is the letter "â" an usuperable obstacle for those
> who know only the letter "a"?...
For some of us, at least, yes. The diacritic implies, by its very existence, that it has meaning, but I do not know what that meaning is, so I am stymied. Removing the diacritics yields a strange word, but one which I can probably absorb.
> Can't the "remove diacriticals" action be performed in the reader's
> brain, instead of in the typesetter's office?
Again, for at least some of us (and I suspect this is a majority of the population unfamiliar with a given diacritic), simply ignoring diacritics is not an option, just as ignoring letters would not be.
/|/|ike
