Comments on: Cre’me Brule’e

By: 8Ypw8cARmuaaQhlReC1TVVZ1_uD5UipmfRo-

8Ypw8cARmuaaQhlReC1TVVZ1_uD5UipmfRo- — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 19:55:00 +0000

Dead keys are used in order to generate some accents using the US-International keyboard layout. For “crème brûlée” (“crème brulée” is also acceptable according to Wikipedia), one would type “cr`eme br^ul’ee” and the computer would automatically place the accents.

Even with this in mind, I would definitely consider it apostrophe abuse.

By: seahedges

seahedges — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 11:18:00 +0000

In fact Italian may replace written accents with an apostrophe: Caffè may be written caffe’, and no one seems to consider it amiss, as best I can see (admittedly Italian is a second language for me, tho I have lived in Italy for the past ten years. The apostrophe-cum-circumflex in crême takes the ga’teau.

–SEA, Asolo

By: Josh

Josh — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 22:05:00 +0000

I work for a web company and my job involves reading text submitted by the general public – and I see this ALL the time. I don’t think most non-tech savvy people have any idea that you can actually type punctuation marks correctly.

By: Beebo

Beebo — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 13:59:00 +0000

I do something similar when typing emails, etc. (not papers or assignments, though) in Italian, since I don’t readily know the alt-codes for accents. But for something like this? Come on. The “insert symbol” menu isn’t hard to find. Even handwritten accents above the typed words would’ve been better.

By: Jerome Colburn

Jerome Colburn — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 23:10:00 +0000

This lady, whose name goes back to the 10th-century Norse queen Ásta Guðbrandsdóttir, was already making the apostrophe-for-acute her trademark when she attended my high school 35 years ago and more, and even in the age of ISO-Latin-1 she still is.

By: arianna

arianna — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 20:26:00 +0000

I’ve actually seen that done before, but usually only at the end of the word. I can’t decide if I am glad that they even TRIED to accent the word, or if their lame attempt was just not even worth it. I’m totally torn.