Otterblog

Many newspapers, this one included, have had a hard time recognizing Hispanic spellings. Often for technological reasons, accent marks and tildes have been difficult to use on surnames, and although for us, it might seem like no big deal, for others, it is a huge deal, because everybody deserves to have their name spelled correctly. As somebody whose last name is always being misspelled, I’m sensitive to this problem.

Anyway, we have started adding accent marks and tildes to Hispanic words, when appropriate, in the paper. The tilde is the little squiggly thing that goes over an ñ, and the sound is a ny sound, as in El Niño. I’m sure there are people out there who think that if Hispanics are going to live here, then they need to leave their accent marks at the border, but that’s wrong on a lot of levels. Spelling people’s names right is about respect.

On the flip side, there’s been a lot of discussion about the proper way to use the name of the Va. Tech shooter Cho Seung-Hui. Most Koreans put the surname in front, which is fine and their prerogative. but on second reference, American journalists were calling him Cho. That confused a lot of people, who thought Cho was his first name. So the AP and the New York Times switched their nomenclature on his name, and he’s now called Seung-Hui Cho on first reference.