Editing Encyclopedia:Naming conventions (use English-language sources) (section)

==Modified letters==
{{see also|Wikipedia:Manual of Style#Spelling and romanization|Wikipedia:Manual of Style#Ligatures}}
{{anchor|Modified letters}}
{{shortcut|WP:DIACRITICS}}

The use of modified letters (e.g. those with [[diacritic|accents or other diacritics]]) in article titles is neither encouraged nor discouraged; when deciding between versions of a word that differ in the use or non-use of modified letters, follow the general usage in [[WP:SOURCES|reliable sources]] that are written in the English language (including [[Wikipedia:NCGN#Widely accepted name|other encyclopedias and reference works]]). The [[WP:COMMONNAME|policy on using common names]] and on [[WP:UE|foreign names]] does not prohibit the use of modified letters, if they are used in the common name as [[WP:VERIFY|verified]] by reliable sources. 

In general, the sources in the article, a Google book search of books published in the last quarter-century or thereabouts, and a selection of other encyclopaedias should all be examples of reliable sources; if all three of them use a term, then that is fairly conclusive. If one of those three diverges from agreement then more investigation will be needed. If there is no consensus in the sources, either form will normally be acceptable as a title. 

Place [[Wikipedia:Redirect#Alternative names and languages|redirects]] at alternative titles, such as those with or without diacritics. Add {{tl|R to diacritic}} or {{tl|R from diacritic}} below the redirect to properly categorize it, such as for print editions.

[[WP:Search engines|Search engines]] are problematic unless their verdict is overwhelming; modified letters have the additional difficulties that some search engines will not distinguish between the original and modified forms, and others fail to recognize the modified letter because of [[optical character recognition]] errors.

[[Old English|''Old'' English]] has one recurrent issue treated separately from [[MOS:CONFORM|''archaic'' glyphs and ligatures in [Modern] English]]. Graphemes like ''œ'' and ''æ'' are separate letters in the [[Old English Latin alphabet]], thus articles are, by and large, titled like [[Ælfric of Eynsham]] for Old English and [[Ægir]] for Old Norse. In Modern English, these are merely optional ligatures<!-- Optional here means basically the same thing "typographic" at Œ#French, distinguished from "linguistic" -->, so MoS splits them into ''oe'' and ''ae''. For Latin- or Greek-derived words, use ''e'' or ''ae''/''oe'', depending on modern usage and the [[WP:ENGVAR|national variety of English]] used in the article. German proper names should be treated with care and attention to {{em|English}} practice. Notice that even in German, combinations such as ''oe'' are used in some names rather than [[Diaeresis (diacritic)|umlaut]]s (as in [[Emmy Noether]] and, in modern German, [[Johann Wolfgang von Goethe]]).

Beware of overdramatising these issues. As an example, [[Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Ireland-related articles]] may be mentioned, which—as a side-effect—{{em|peacefully}} regulated use of diacritics regarding Ireland-related articles before, during, and after an extensive dispute on the question of diacritics in 2005, such as [[Inishmore]] and not {{lang|ga|Inis Mór}}, or [[Tomás Ó Fiaich]] and not ''Tomas O'Fiaich'' (see the aforementioned MoS page for details).