The Umlaut in The New Yorker
January 4, 2011
by Evan
Let me start by saying that I like The New Yorker. It’s a bit daunting. I don’t see how anyone can read that much content each week. I don’t even try with the fiction, much as I would like to, and feel guilty about not being able to get to it all. . But what I read, I like very much. Over the weekend I read a piece by Jefrrey Toobin about the United States attorney who ran the botched Ted Stevens prosecution, and recently committed suicide. I like pretty much everything Jeffrey Toobin writes, and even though it’s quite a sad story, this too. I even had a two degree of separation connection to one of the people quoted in the story.
The umlaut threw me. It’s used on the word cooperation, which appears twice. I didn’t know what to make of it. Granted I’m not the best reader, but I’m not the worst either. I read the Times thoroughly every day, sometimes The New Republic, and my fair share of books. I’m sure I’ve seen the word cooperation used in these places and others many times before. Somehow I understood the meaning of the word without the umlaut. Why did they need it? It’s not used in my copy of the dictionary. I can’t imagine any confusion with another word, such as coop-eration with a long “o.” Why use it?
Now it might be reasonable to ask, “why not use it?” I have several reasons. First, it’s German. I don’t want to impose a punitive peace, but ceteris paribus, as the Latins say, German punctuation should be disfavored. Second, it’s pretentious. Generally speaking, pretentious language, such as ceteris paribus, should be disfavored. Third, it’s confusing. For a moment, I wondered whether I had been misusing cooperation all of my life, or misspelling it, or had simply fallen out of touch.
Toobin must be given no blame in this. Cooperation appears in The Nine sans umlaut. It’s clearly New Yorker policy, and what could this policy be? The umlaut costs them money in ink, probably four or five dollars per decade. What must they say to themselves. Something like, this punctuation is important to our core readers. No doubt these are the same folks who find the cartoons funny.