[thomasfoster96]

The New Yorker is kind of well known for being virtually the only significant English publication which uses a diaeresis (the ¨) where almost everyone else uses a hyphen or just two repeated letters [0].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ö#In_English, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diaeresis_(diacritic)#English

[stephenc_c_]

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/the-curse-of-...

[freehunter]

>Those two dots, often mistaken for an umlaut

Hmm maybe it's because it looks exactly like an umlaut and is often placed exactly where an umlaut would be placed?

[thomasfoster96]

The diaeresis and umlaut are literally exactly the same Unicode character and the symbol or diacritic itself can be called either. The difference is what it does to the vowel — it’s a diaeresis if it indicates a repeated vowel, and an umlaut if it modifies the vowel sound.

[pimlottc]

Just to note, a diaeresis isn't always the same vowel repeated. The most common example is "naïve", and it also occurs in names like Chloë.

[thomasfoster96]

Whoops, you’re right, my explanation missed that!