Editing English orthography (section)

== Diacritics ==
{{Main|English terms with diacritical marks}}
{{See also|British and American keyboards}}

Some English words can be written with [[diacritic]]s; these are mostly [[loanword]]s, usually from French.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.thegoodlifefrance.com/common-french-words-also-common-in-english/ |title=Common French words also common in English |website=The Good Life France |date=23 November 2011 |access-date=11 April 2016}}</ref> As vocabulary becomes naturalised, there is an increasing tendency to omit the accent marks, even in formal writing. For example, ''rôle'' and ''hôtel'' originally had accents when they were borrowed into English, but now the accents are almost never used. The words were originally considered foreign—and some people considered that English alternatives were preferable—but today their foreign origin is largely forgotten. Words most likely to retain the accent are those atypical of English morphology and therefore still perceived as slightly foreign. For example, ''café'' and ''pâté'' both have a pronounced final {{vr|e}}, which would otherwise be silent under the normal English pronunciation rules. Moreover, in ''pâté'', the [[acute accent]] is helpful to distinguish it from ''pate''.

Further examples of words sometimes retaining diacritics when used in English are: ''ångström''—partly because its symbol is {{angbr|Å}}—''appliqué'', ''attaché'', ''blasé'', ''bric-à-brac'', ''Brötchen'',{{efn|Included in [[Webster's Third New International Dictionary]], 1981}} ''cliché'', ''crème'', ''crêpe'', ''fiancé(e)'', ''flambé'', ''jalapeño'', ''naïve'', ''naïveté'', ''né(e)'', ''papier-mâché'', ''passé'', ''piñata'', ''protégé'', ''résumé'', ''risqué'', and ''voilà''. [[Italic type|Italics]], with appropriate accents, are generally applied to foreign terms that are uncommonly used in or have not been assimilated into English: for example, ''{{linktext|adiós}}'', ''belles-lettres'', ''[[crème brûlée]]'', ''{{linktext|pièce de résistance}}'', ''{{linktext|raison d'être}}'', and ''{{linktext|vis-à-vis}}''.

It was formerly common in American English to use a [[Diaeresis (diacritic)|diaeresis]] to indicate a [[hiatus (linguistics)|hiatus]], e.g. ''coöperate'', ''daïs'', and ''reëlect''. ''[[The New Yorker]]'' and ''[[Technology Review]]'' magazines still use it for this purpose, even as general use became much rarer. Instead, modern orthography generally prefers no mark (''cooperate'') or a hyphen (''co-operate'') for a hiatus between two morphemes in a compound word. By contrast, use of diaereses in monomorphemic loanwords such as ''naïve'' and ''Noël'' remains relatively common.

In poetry and performance arts, accent marks are occasionally used to indicate typically unstressed syllables that should be stressed when read for dramatic or prosodic effect. This is frequently seen with the ''-ed'' suffix in archaic and pseudoarchaic writing, e.g. ''cursèd'' indicates the {{vr|e}} should be fully pronounced. The grave being to indicate that an ordinarily silent or elided syllable is pronounced (''warnèd'', ''parlìament'').