"Reëlection" - does English use the diaeresis?

[khakidoggy]

In this article on the New Yorker, Richard Socarides uses the spelling "reëlection". This is the first time I've seen the diaeresis, the two points over the e, used in this fashion.

Germans call it Umlaut, but use it primarily to modify the sound of vowels. In Dutch we call it a 'trema' and use it exclusively to separate two adjoining monopthong

Comments

[kiranlightpaw]

American here, and I have never seen anyone spell reelection with umlaut before. Being that it's not a very common feature in English, I suspect the vast majority of Americans (and, to be fair, probably native English speakers in general) would have no idea how to pronounce it.

It's more common to see it written "re-election," with a hyphen between the prefix and the root word when the last letter of the prefix and the first letter of the root word are the same letter. However this use is becoming somewhat less common. The Associated Press stylebook - the Bible for journalists - states that the hyphen may be omitted for commonly understood words (and "reelection" is listed as one. :P)

Isn't US English awesome?! :P

Of English and Umlauts

[doniago]

I tend to agree with all of this. :)

[otterdoc]

Never seen the umlaut used that way in the US before. Nice catch!

-M.

[sabertail]

I've generally only seen it used for names in English. The first example that comes to mind is Zoë. That is, zoh-ee, not zoh.

It also still lingers around this time of year in Noël.

I think it's fallen out of use in English because it wasn't common enough to justify including on typewriters and then, later, computer keyboards. So now a hyphen ends up serving a similar purpose. E.g. 're-election' or 'co-op'.

[footpad]

And my little niece, Chloë-though I'm not sure even her mum bothers with the umlaut.

In the Romance languages, of course, the diaeresis is still alive and well, but in English it survives only (as later commenters remark) in vestigial instances like naïve. Coöperation is still valid, but so wilfully archaic that I consider it vaguely hypocritical to use it unless you also refer to diæresis.

[scruff]

We only tend to use it in 'naïve' that I recall in common usage.

[chipotle]

It's old-fashioned; in many ways the New Yorker is still a resolutely old-fashioned magazine, and this is reflected in their house style. They also frequently write "coöperate."