Pain in the English
Pain in the English

Unpacking English, Bit by Bit

A community for questioning, nitpicking, and debating the quirks and rules of the English language.

Pain in the English
Pain in the English

Unpacking English, Bit by Bit

A community for questioning, nitpicking, and debating the quirks and rules of the English language.

Username

fancy_dave

Member Since

February 7, 2005

Total number of comments

1

Total number of votes received

39

Bio

Latest Comments

Resume, resumé, or résumé?

  • February 7, 2005, 8:54pm

The punctuation marks on top of the letter 'e' in French are for pronunciation, not for 'accenting' the sound (as I presume you mean, in the sense of stressing or inflecting it differently).

Without any punctuation, the word is identical on the page (and nearly identical in French pronunciation) to the English word 'resume' which has its own distinct meaning. Although printed puns are a good source of cheap hilarity, we've got plenty in English already. Let's not make more if we don't have to.

I think we should resume using résumé in order to avoid confusion.

It might be harder to type, but are we not human beings???