Des accents sur les majuscules en français : la pratique chez Microsoft

[Alain LaBonté <alb@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

From: Michel Suignard <michelsu@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
>To: "'\"Alain LaBonté"  <alb@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>'"
>	 <"Alain LaBonté"  <alb@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>>, Mark Davis
>	 <mark@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>, michel@xxxxxxxxxxx, mark@xxxxxxxxxxx">
>Subject: RE: Problem in Collation Ballot Version
>Date: Mon, 23 Nov 1998 10:44:26 -0800

[Michel Suignard, Microsoft (Seattle, anciennement de Microsoft Europe
 à Paris, et membre d'Unicode), en réaction à une de mes notes, annexée] :

>I fully concur with Alain. It has been a long fight for me in Microsoft to
>reverse an earlier design decision to drop accents in French. Despite
>evidence of the contrary shown in their face (magazines, books, newspapers,
>etc..) I had several clever people assert very vehemently that French never
>accentuated capitals. It is one of the most bizarre optical illusion, it is
>probably induced by long years of education where we learnt not to put
>accents on uppercase hand written capitals.
>
>I have also found that more and more often you find capital with accents
>even in the first letter case of sentences. This was not as much the case in
>the past, but it is becoming the norm. This is quite visible with the
>preposition 'A grave'.
>
>I wouldn't mind having the text de-emphasize this French peculiarity as its
>usage is clearly overblown and more present in brains than in reality.
>
>Michel

>-----Original Message-----
From: "Alain LaBonté" <alb@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> [mailto:"Alain LaBonté"
><alb@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]
>Sent: Sunday, November 22, 1998 5:14 PM
>To: Mark Davis; michel@xxxxxxxxxxx; mark@xxxxxxxxxxx
>Subject: Re: Problem in Collation Ballot Version
>
>
>A 14:47 98-11-22 -0700, Mark Davis (Taligent [IBM],
   et v.-p. d'Unicode) a écrit :

>>I have questions on French uppercasing that I wanted to get your expert
>>opinions on.
>>
>>1.  My understanding is that the removal of accents when uppercasing is
>>the standard in France. Is this true? 

[Alain] :
>No. Practice was due to technological constraints and it has created
>confusion as it has been taught in France, perhaps to avoid depressions
>among young pupils (;
>
>There is still confusion in Le Monde newspaper (they remove accents on the
>initial sentence letter, never in titles [and because of confusion there
>are deviations to both practices).

[Mark] :
>>If not, what is the best
>>description of its status (compared to leaving the accents on), chosing
>>from the following:
>>
>>required: ?

[Alain] :
>Definitely required.

[Mark] :
>>preferred: ?
>>acceptable: ?
>>denegrated: ?
>>unacceptable: ?
>>
>>2. When removing accents from uppercase letters, is this done just when
>>fully uppercasing, or when titlecasing too?
>>
>>Examples (using ' for grave, since I'm not sure the mailer will preserve
>>it):
>>title: e'te' => E'te' or Ete'
>>upper: e'te' => ETE
>>(I myself have seen text in advertisements in France where the removal
>>was done on fully uppercase words, but not on title words.)

[Alain] :
>Confusion exists. See my comment about Le Monde. But nowadays the Ministère
>de l'Éducation nationale only has one recommendation: always put them,
>except in cases where the hardware does not allow to put them.
>The typographical bible (and all grammarians) always said that accents have
>full spelling value in French. Only once (in 1975) one edition (rectified
>with a corrigendum) said that a standalone (À) "`A" was more esthetic
>without accent... this bad recommendation has been corrected within a few
>months.

[Mark] :
>>3. When removing accents from uppercase letters, is this done for all
>>uppercase letters or just for French. That is, would the accents be
>>removed from German, Hungarian, Vietnamese, Greek, Cyrillic, etc?

[Alain] :
>This was a bad and inconsistent habit in France (and in Québec too). We all
>hope it will be over soon.
>
>In Greece I believe that this also exists, not in German, I believe. I
>don't know for others but I would be surprised.

[Mark] :
>>Dans ce cas, j'espere que vous me pardonnez pour ne pas ecrire en
>>francais--mais c'est bien sur plus clair si j'utilize l'anglais!

[Alain] :
>Il me semble que ce serait tout aussi clair si le français était aussi bon
>que celui-ci (sauf l'absence d'accents et la faute dans « utilize » (pas de
>z, mais un s en français) !
>
>Amitiés.
>
>Alain