"Le bon usage" (Grevisse) suggests that people have traditionally not used
accents in manuscripts/handwriting, but recommends to apply accents on
print.
Some of our best professors would give us a very hard time when we applied
accents. I always thought that dictionnaries showed accents on purpose
(since terms are all upper-cased).
Now I realize that I have mispelled my name my entire life...
Etienne, no �tienne
-----Original Message-----
From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]]On
Behalf Of Alain LaBont�
Sent: Friday, November 30, 2001 2:23 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: French uppercase accented letters
A 12:49 2001-11-30 +0000, S�amas � Br�g�in a �crit :
>According to the style manual of the Imprimerie Nationale (_Lexique des
>R�gles Typographiques en Usage � l'Imprimerie Nationale_, 2nd edition,
1975,
>p. 7---not sure if that's the latest edition, though):
>
>"L'accent a, en fran�ais, pleine valeur orthographique. Son absence
ralentit
>la lecture et fait h�siter sur la prononciation, sur le sens m�me de
>nombreux mots. Aussi convient-il de s'opposer � la tendance d'une certaine
>typographie qui, sous pr�texte de modernisme, semble pr�ner la suppression
>des accents sur les majuscules. C'est pourquoi, sauf en ce qui concerne la
>lettre A _isol�e_ (sur laquelle l'accent grave serait disgracieux), on
>veillera � utiliser syst�matiquement les capiitales accentu�es ..."
>
>S�amas � Br�g�in
>----------------
[Alain] The change is that they eliminated the unfortunate remark for the
isolated letter A which tey considered an exception. Even for the edition
of 1975, there was a corrigendum removing this fantasy of the editor.
In other words, accents shall be put all the time on uppercase letters
when an accent exists on the equivalent lower case letter of a given word,
including on the word � where the letter is stand-alone (and indeed the
entry for � � � in French dictionaries has always been presented with an
accent on the upper case letter).
Alain LaBont�
Qu�bec
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