Did you know that AP style does not "allow" accents on names? Here's a direct quote from APStylebook.com: "Do not use any diacritical or accent marks because they cause garble for some users." One newspaper that I had a contract with adhered to this rule, whereas one newsweekly that I copyedited ignored it. As someone who runs in primarily Latino family/friend circles, I find this a tad annoying. No one likes their name misspelled, and neglecting an accent mark can change the whole meaning and pronunciation of a word. When I deal with a new client who is basing their house style on AP, I always suggest they make an exception to this rule.
On the other hand, I understand the aversion to garbled text, and I understand that many AP suggestions are historically based on the limitations of "the wire." I came across this blog post that has another good point: it is really difficult for reporters and writers to find the correct spelling in a short amount of time, and to keep these references consistent. This blog post asks "Where does it stop!?" Since Spanish is the second-most spoken language here in the U.S., should we accent Spanish names--and continue to misspell names derived from other languages?
What has your experience been with this?
I’m not trying to advance any kind of slippery-slope logic, but Spanish losing an accent isn’t as bad as, say, Mandarin, where tonal differences are exceedingly common and not represented in latinized text. Similarly, almost any other transliterated text is going to lose something.
It’s probably wisest to just use English character sets when writing in English.
Disregarding accent marks in names is, in my opinion, as bad as misspelling them altogether. For that reason, I feel that accent marks should me included in order to maintain the true spelling and pronunciation.
I am always wary of arguments that exceptions should be made only for the largest minority group, leaving members of the other minority groups to struggle on their own. (A popular example: Public schools that teach classes in Spanish, rather than providing more ESL help to all new English speakers, because the largest group of non-English speakers speak Spanish.) This only makes things more difficult and disheartening for members of smaller minorities. If it’s not fair to spell only English names correctly, it’s not much more fair to spell only English and Spanish names correctly.
I think this should be a matter of house style, with each publication deciding based on what their capabilities are. On the printed page, I see no reason why accent and diacritical marks can’t be produced correctly. Most web sites appear to do well with this, though some may have problems, and email newsletters, especially those not in HTML, are very likely to get garbled. I think the rule should be: “If your publishing method can handle accent marks, use them. If it can’t, do the best you can to approximate the name, perhaps with apologies to the person involved.”
Still, I would like to see the AP guideline changed so that the default plan is to spell the name correctly, with a note that one can leave the marks off if one can’t be sure they won’t get garbled.
Accents do not cause garble. Pages with faulty UTF-8 encoding do. The statement is shows a lack of understanding on how websites work.
well it is a quote from the AP and not from Microsoft, so you may be right Socrates!