English punctuation is pretty straightforward. We have periods, commas, apostrophes, question marks, dashes — and sometimes things might get interesting with a semicolon or an exclamation mark. But if you’ve ever read The New Yorker magazine, you might have noticed a very particular type of punctuation: two dots above certain words, such as in“reëlect” and “coöperate.” Although these marks are almost obsolete in English and might seem more like accents than punctuation, they still function as the latter.
Diaeresis vs. Umlaut
This punctuation mark, called a “diaeresis,” may look like an umlaut, but it’s actually different. “Diaeresis,” pronounced “di-ER-uhs-uhs,” comes from the Greek for “divide.” It’s unique from the German umlaut because an umlaut alters the pronunciation and meaning of a word — for example, schon (adverb) means “already,” while schön (adjective) means “nice” or “beautiful.”
A diaeresis does not alter the meaning of a word, and for that reason, it’s considered by some to be inessential. It’s a mark placed over a vowel to indicate that it is pronounced in a separate syllable, as in the case of the adjective “naïve.” Consider other words with the same vowel pairing — “rail,” “drain,” “laid” — and notice that they do not employ this dotted punctuation. In these words, the vowels form what linguists call a “diphthong,” or a sound formed by the combination of two vowels. But in words with a diaeresis, the vowels are pronounced individually: We pronounce “naïve” as “nye-EVE,” as opposed to “nave.” A diaeresis also occasionally will be used with a single vowel at the end of a word to show that the letter isn’t silent, as in the case of “Brontë.”
Fowler’s Modern English Usage says, “Since the sign is not often on modern keyboards, it is often omitted in printed work; and it has also usually been dropped from such familiar words as aërate, coöperate (now aerate, cooperate).” Dictionaries by Merriam-Webster and American Heritage also suggest that the diaeresis is optional.
Legacy Punctuation
So, why does The New Yorker persist? In a 2012 article on the topic, writer Mary Norris explained that when the magazine began in 1925, it adopted the diaeresis as “the most elegant solution with the broadest application.” It found it more refined to write “coöperate” than “co-operate.” She wrote that in the late 1970s, her predecessor pestered the style editor Hobie Weekes, who had been there since 1928, to finally get rid of the punctuation because she found it fussy. He was open to the idea and intended to make the stylistic change, but then he died, and no one has broached the subject since.
The tradition of the diaeresis lives on.
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