Lu Burke used to pester the style editor, Hobie Weekes, who had been at the magazine since 1928, to get rid of the diaeresis. A notice went up on the bulletin board that began, вЂњAdjust your reflexes.вЂќ For instance, back in the eighties, the editors decided to modernize by moving the semicolon outside of the closing quotation mark. Some have wondered why itвЂ™s still hanging around. Not everyone at The New Yorker is devoted to the diaeresis. The fact is that, absent the two dots, most people would not trip over the вЂњcoopвЂќ in вЂњcooperateвЂќ or the вЂњreelвЂќ in вЂњreelect,вЂќ though they might pronounce the вЂњzooвЂќ in вЂњzoologicalвЂќ (and we donвЂ™t use the diaeresis for that). He was for letting people figure things out for themselves.

Hyphen was considering these things, the diaeresis was already almost obsolete, and he was through with it. The question is: Why bother? Especially since the diaeresis is the single thing that readers of the letter-writing variety complain about most.Д«asically, we have three options for these kinds of words: вЂњcooperate,вЂќ вЂњco-operate,вЂќ and вЂњcoГ¶perate.вЂќ Back when the magazine was just developing its style, someone decided that the first could be misread and the second was ridiculous, and so adopted the third as the most elegant solution with the broadest application. The autocorrect whisks it off, and you have to go back, highlight the letter, hold down the option key while pressing the u, and then retype the appropriate letter. ItвЂ™s actually a lot of trouble, these days, to get the diaeresis to stick over the vowel. The New Yorker may be the only publication in America that uses it regularly. Most of the English-speaking world finds the diaeresis inessential. A diaeresis always goes over the second vowel, and it means that the vowel is leading off a separate syllable.ДЄ diaeresis is a mark placed over a vowel to indicate that the vowel is pronounced in a separate syllable-as in 'naГЇve' or 'BrontГ«'. In German, if an umlaut appears in a combination of two vowels, it will go over the first vowel, and it indicates something important: a plural, say. Often mistakenly called an umlaut, a diaeresis (pronounced вЂњdie heiressesвЂќ itвЂ™s from the Greek for вЂњdivide,вЂќ and is devilishly hard to spell) consists of two dots carefully centered over the second vowel in such words as вЂњnaГЇveвЂќ and вЂњreГ«lection.вЂќ An umlaut is a German thing that alters the pronunciation of a vowel (BrГјnnhilde) and often changes the meaning of a word: schon (adv.), already schГ¶n (adj.), beautiful. There is one other way to keep the вЂњcowвЂќ out of вЂњco-workersвЂќ: where two vowels rub up against each other, a diaeresis may be used instead of a hyphen.

If youвЂ™re reading something and you encounter a diaeresis, chances are youвЂ™re reading The New Yorker. Among other things, her book demystifies one of the most puzzling marks a reader is likely to encounter: the diaeresis. She is the author of Between You & Me: Confessions of a Comma Queen. Mary Norris began working at The New Yorker in 1978 and spent more than three decades as a copy editor, where she worked with celebrated writers Philip Roth, Pauline Kael, and George Saunders.

A with umlaut in word