An 85-year-old blunder has just been fixed at Westminster Abbey to change the spelling to Brontë with the important diaresis. Here’s how to type an ë in Word and other matters arising.
Here’s how the memorial to the Brontë sisters looked in Poets Corner until a few days ago.
For 85 years this memorial, seen by millions, had three spelling errors. The famous Brontë sisters spelled their name, mostly and officially with a diaeresis over the letter ë.
A news story about the correction of the spelling is our excuse to explain how to type the diaresis version of some letters and other Office related matters.
Diaresis or Umlaut in Word
The two dots above a letter are called “diaresis” in English.
Use the shortcut Ctrl + Shift + : (colon) then a letter a e i o u y A E I O U Y to add the diaresis
ä ë ï ö ü ÿ Ä Ë Ï Ö Ü Ÿ
The diaresis in English is normally used to indicate that a vowel is to be pronounced separately. For example ´ Noël ’ we say both the o and e. It’s the same thing in ‘Naïve’ or the name ‘ Zoë ‘ (without the diaresis it should rhyme with ‘Joe’).
In German/Deutsch the same two dots are called an umlaut for the letters ä ö or ü to indicate a different pronunciation of that vowel.
Fast umlaut ä ë ï ö ü in Microsoft Word and Office
Spell Check
Word spell check accepts both Brontë and Bronte as you can see here.
If you want a spelling warning about one of them (probably ‘Bronte’) add the word to the Office Dictionary Exclusion list.
AutoCorrect
Another choice is to setup AutoCorrect to change Bronte into Brontë automatically. File | Options | Proofing | AutoCorrect Options | AutoCorrect.
Now whenever you type Bronte it’ll automatically change to Brontë
Read Aloud / Pronunciation
Out of curiosity we tested Office’s modern Read Aloud to see how it pronounced the words Bronte or Brontë .
Real Aloud ignores the diaresis and says both words the same way “Bron-tay” with US voices selected. But the UK and Aussie voices use that pronunciation instead of ‘Bront-tee’.
The other Brontes
There are at least two other Bronte proper nouns which do not use the ë ending.
Bronte Beach (no diaresis) is just south of Sydney’s more famous Bondi Beach.
The beach is named after Lord Horatio Nelson who, among his many titles was Duke of Bronte. That Bronte is a Sicilian town and comune.
(Amazing what trivia we discover just writing about Microsoft Office!)
Using Alt to get accent and other characters
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