8 ms·

The New Yorker also makes some other... unconventional typographic decisions such as using a diaeresis in words like coöperate or reëxamined https://www.newyor

The New Yorker also makes some other... unconventional typographic decisions such as using a diaeresis in words like coöperate or reëxamined https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/the-curse-of-the-diaeresis https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/the-curse-of-...

oh_sigh 4y ago
Right. Good for them for having a unique style, but I don't know why anyone else would decide to format their text like this. Same thing with the recent "black"/"Black" decision by NYTimes.
- lou1306 4y ago
  Just playing devil's advocate here, but cooperate and cooper have different pronunciations, and coöperate (or co-operate) makes it absolutely clear.
  - bombcar 4y ago
    It’s the best kind of correct - technically correct. Co-worker vs cow orker, etc.
  - googlryas 4y ago
    I can't imagine that to be the case, because this is English...there are numerous common words that are spelled exactly the same, but pronounced differently (read, wind, wound off the top of my head). The fact that they don't give them any special treatment(diatrics or something else) makes me think the legibility is not the concern. Also, I might be wrong, but I don't think people read most words by scanning letter by letter and forming a belief as to what the word says. I personally have never misread cooperate as cooper, as far as I can recall.
    - zestyping 4y ago
      I think it's more a question of what's easier on the reader, rather than what a reader can feasibly distinguish. Yes, words like "read", "present", "lead" have multiple prononunciations, but they have a cost; if half the words you encountered were like that, English would be very hard to read. I find "co-operate" slightly easier to read than "cooperate", at the expense of being slightly longer. These are all minor trade-offs (or is it tradeoffs?) of course; it's not a cut-and-dry (but hopefully not cutanddry) argument as to what to do in any individual case.
- js2 4y ago
  The NYT, er, N.Y.T. has a crazy set of rules for acronyms/initialisms. Acronyms—which according to the N.Y.T is any initialism which is pronounceable as a word instead of by its individual letters—are styled in all capitals when they are four letters or fewer. Longer acronyms are styled in titlecase. Meanwhile, initialisms retain periods between the capital letters. (I find this to be terribly ugly since it messes up kerning.) So with this combination of rules we get this ridiculous result: N.F.L., NATO, and Nafta. They used to write "Nascar", but it seems they've changed their mind on that: https://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/02/insider/now-it-is-official-the-internet-is-over.html https://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/02/insider/now-it-is-officia... https://www.nytimes.com/topic/organization/national-association-of-stock-car-auto-racing-nascar https://www.nytimes.com/topic/organization/national-associat... I wonder if anyone can figure out why the N.Y.T. styles broadcast networks as acronyms? ABC, CBS, CNN, NBC. https://www.nytimes.com/1994/02/20/magazine/on-language-linguaclips.html https://www.nytimes.com/1994/02/20/magazine/on-language-ling...
  - Stratoscope 4y ago
    It gets even weirder. A few years ago the New Yorker had a short article talking about SOS, the emergency signal used in Morse Code. And they wrote it S.O.S. Which is patently wrong. SOS is not sent in Morse like this, as if it were three separate letters: dit dit dit (pause) dah dah dah (pause) dit dit dit (The letter "S" is "dit dit dit" and the letter "O" is "dah dah dah".) It's sent all at once without pauses between the letters, because it is not the three separate letters at all. SOS is a "prosign", sent like this: dit dit dit dah dah dah dit dit dit To help indicate this, SOS is customarily typeset with an overbar connecting the letters, like this: ___ SOS (If the bar above SOS has gaps in it when rendered on your device, imagine that it is one solid bar.) It's not an initialism, not three separate letters, and definitely not S.O.S.
    - gweinberg 4y ago
      Maybe they believe the goofy legend that it stands for "save our ship".
      - 4y ago

oh_sigh 4y ago

Right. Good for them for having a unique style, but I don't know why anyone else would decide to format their text like this. Same thing with the recent "black"/"Black" decision by NYTimes.

lou1306 4y ago
Just playing devil's advocate here, but cooperate and cooper have different pronunciations, and coöperate (or co-operate) makes it absolutely clear.
- bombcar 4y ago
  It’s the best kind of correct - technically correct. Co-worker vs cow orker, etc.
- googlryas 4y ago
  I can't imagine that to be the case, because this is English...there are numerous common words that are spelled exactly the same, but pronounced differently (read, wind, wound off the top of my head). The fact that they don't give them any special treatment(diatrics or something else) makes me think the legibility is not the concern. Also, I might be wrong, but I don't think people read most words by scanning letter by letter and forming a belief as to what the word says. I personally have never misread cooperate as cooper, as far as I can recall.
  - zestyping 4y ago
    I think it's more a question of what's easier on the reader, rather than what a reader can feasibly distinguish. Yes, words like "read", "present", "lead" have multiple prononunciations, but they have a cost; if half the words you encountered were like that, English would be very hard to read. I find "co-operate" slightly easier to read than "cooperate", at the expense of being slightly longer. These are all minor trade-offs (or is it tradeoffs?) of course; it's not a cut-and-dry (but hopefully not cutanddry) argument as to what to do in any individual case.
js2 4y ago
The NYT, er, N.Y.T. has a crazy set of rules for acronyms/initialisms. Acronyms—which according to the N.Y.T is any initialism which is pronounceable as a word instead of by its individual letters—are styled in all capitals when they are four letters or fewer. Longer acronyms are styled in titlecase. Meanwhile, initialisms retain periods between the capital letters. (I find this to be terribly ugly since it messes up kerning.) So with this combination of rules we get this ridiculous result: N.F.L., NATO, and Nafta. They used to write "Nascar", but it seems they've changed their mind on that: https://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/02/insider/now-it-is-official-the-internet-is-over.html https://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/02/insider/now-it-is-officia... https://www.nytimes.com/topic/organization/national-association-of-stock-car-auto-racing-nascar https://www.nytimes.com/topic/organization/national-associat... I wonder if anyone can figure out why the N.Y.T. styles broadcast networks as acronyms? ABC, CBS, CNN, NBC. https://www.nytimes.com/1994/02/20/magazine/on-language-linguaclips.html https://www.nytimes.com/1994/02/20/magazine/on-language-ling...
- Stratoscope 4y ago
  It gets even weirder. A few years ago the New Yorker had a short article talking about SOS, the emergency signal used in Morse Code. And they wrote it S.O.S. Which is patently wrong. SOS is not sent in Morse like this, as if it were three separate letters: dit dit dit (pause) dah dah dah (pause) dit dit dit (The letter "S" is "dit dit dit" and the letter "O" is "dah dah dah".) It's sent all at once without pauses between the letters, because it is not the three separate letters at all. SOS is a "prosign", sent like this: dit dit dit dah dah dah dit dit dit To help indicate this, SOS is customarily typeset with an overbar connecting the letters, like this: ___ SOS (If the bar above SOS has gaps in it when rendered on your device, imagine that it is one solid bar.) It's not an initialism, not three separate letters, and definitely not S.O.S.
  - gweinberg 4y ago
    Maybe they believe the goofy legend that it stands for "save our ship".
    - 4y ago