Talk:cliche'

From Requests for cleanup
Described as a common misspelling, but then goes on to say this is used in ASCII environments. If anything, this should explain that this is a way of rendering "cliché" when accented characters are unavailable rather than label it as misspelled. Anyone who types this is probably well aware of the acute accent in the spelling, otherwise they would omit the apostrophe. (The spelling "cliche" without the accent is a separate issue.)

Many Italian words ending in an accented character are commonly typed or written in this manner, eg, e'  and caffe' .


 * Typing Italian with the apostrophe instead of accents is a long-time standard way of typing Italian. Typographers have to know enough about Italian to know whether a given ' is an accent or is really an apostrophe, which is also common in Italian. But this common and accepted practice does not mean that the same is okay in English. In English, we either write the accent (è, é, ê), or we don’t put anything at all. I would consider the English usage of cliche' to be a misspelling...it should be cliché or cliche. —Stephen 16:41, 17 May 2007 (UTC)


 * I know I've seen this form in usenet, and I entered it on en.wiktionary, after someone questioned my use of it on IRC. Is the complaint that such information should be limited to a usage notes section?  --Connel MacKenzie 17:01, 17 May 2007 (UTC)


 * Probably. I'll change this to a cross-reference to cliché and put this spelling under the usage notes for that word. &mdash; Paul G 14:21, 22 May 2007 (UTC)


 * Done. The question remains, however, how the plural of cliche'  is written - presumably cliches, as cliche's looks like a case of the greengrocer's apostrophe. &mdash; Paul G 14:42, 22 May 2007 (UTC)


 * Regarding the plural, I've never seen it. While the singular is exceptional, I don't think the plural would be understood.  --Connel MacKenzie 16:28, 28 May 2007 (UTC)