Not pretentious at all

“Courier columnist, Steve Finan, in ‘oh my word!’ declares he does not like and does not use diacritics, the little signs above and below letters in words borrowed from foreign languages,” writes a Craigie regular.

“As he rightly points out, such marks often help with pronunciation, such as in the case of ‘cafe’ (acute accent over the ‘e’) and ‘resume’ (acute accents over both ‘e’s).

“Of course they do and, as long as the foreign words are not completely assimilated into English, with an English pronunciation, then the signs are necessary for speedy understanding and correct pronunciation.

“Steve claims we are being pretentious when we use the signs. On the contrary, anything which promotes clarity and understanding helps the reader and it is just common sense to use such signs.

“The same applies to hyphens and inverted commas. A recent problem with the omission of a hyphen occurred with the word ‘miniseries’. I thought it was ‘ministries’, then realised from the meaning that was not correct, stopped and gazed at the word until I realised it should have been written ‘mini-series’.

“The same applies to e-mail. Written without the hyphen, which is now correct usage, makes no sense and irritates the traditionalist with its approach to pronunciation.

“In short, put me down as a diacritic, hyphen and inverted commas fan and an enemy of the growing fashion for going down the kaff for a cuppa!”