A Diaresis I Don’t Often See
A diaresis is two dots above the second of a pair of vowels to show that you pronounce each vowel; it’s not a diphthong. Perhaps the most common example is in the word coöperative, or maybe naïve.
Here’s another, from the New Yorker, of course:
Last summer, a coalition of environmental groups around the country sent T.N.C. a letter asking it to reëvaluate support for promoting forestry as a “natural climate solution” and, in particular, to come out against burning trees to produce electricity—the so-called biomass energy that scientists now understand to be a major climate threat and that sociologists know to be a prime example of environmental racism.
https://www.newyorker.com/news/annals-of-a-warming-planet/its-not-the-heat-its-the-humanity
Usually people use a hyphen because they don’t know how to make a diaresis. Hence, re-evaluate and co-operative. That’s okay.
Here’s a picture of the ASCII codes for the diaresis:
PS—I think it’s slightly funny that we don’t spell it diäresis…
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