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There are a lot of items tagged , however the proper spelling is "résumé". Is it possible to make the tag be an alias of a "résumé" tag? I know that the accented E is supported in taxonomy (as well as other diacritics) because I can see those characters in https://french.stackexchange.com/

Should be noted:

  • While the resume spelling is in common usage, it is less formal and less common in more academic scholarship.
  • This seems to be a question of "formal" as opposed to "informal", for while dictionaries do say that "resume" is a common spelling they unilaterally use résumé for the name of the entry. Historically, résumé is more correct.
  • Diacritics do not break taxonomy at all.
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  • +1 to the proposal
    – Dawny33
    Dec 4, 2015 at 15:57
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    Apparently you seem to be on an editing spree, changing out "resume" for "résumé". I assume most of your edits are making it through but note that SE normally frowns on such insignificant edits. "Resume" is not incorrect, it's an accepted alternative spelling which makes such edits trivial. Changing American for British English is similarly not an acceptable edit.
    – Lilienthal Mod
    Dec 4, 2015 at 16:08
  • I just edited your question with "résumé" as a tag and it... seems it was auto convered to "resume" :)
    – enderland
    Dec 4, 2015 at 16:33
  • @enderland I know. :-(
    – cwallenpoole
    Dec 4, 2015 at 16:37
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    Why bother? Nobody will be confused or inconvenienced by using the term "resume".
    – Joe Strazzere
    Dec 5, 2015 at 16:05
  • Nobody will be confused or inconvenienced by many things. It is a grammatical question, much like whether to capitalize "Facebook" as the logo has a lower case f.
    – cwallenpoole
    Dec 5, 2015 at 22:27
  • You wrote 'unilaterally', but I think you meant 'universally', which is pretty much the opposite meaning.
    – user52889
    Dec 10, 2015 at 23:21
  • @user52889 "Unilateral" can mean "one-sided". A "unilateral effort" can be undertaken by more than one party so long as each member of the party is taking the same effort.
    – cwallenpoole
    Dec 11, 2015 at 15:36
  • In 35 years at work (UK) I have never used the accented version of resume - I think most would think it pretentious think Niles in Frasier
    – Pepone
    Dec 25, 2015 at 20:57

3 Answers 3

Reset to default
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No

As in: we can, but we shouldn't.

In modern English resume and résumé are pretty much interchangeable. Over time, loan words in American English seem to lose their diacritic marks as they lose their link to the original language. British English generally prefers CV over either.

Since both are fine and the accented version is likely to wane in popularity in the coming years I don't see the point in changing it.

Update

The tag syntax "[ tag:tagname ]" for questions does not work with accents! This alone is sufficient reason not to proceed with the rename. I prefer over résumé as [tag:résumé] just doesn't work.

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    Also, keep in mind most people have keyboards with "e" characters - I do not have an "é" character on my keyboard and I suspect nearly all who type in English do not either..
    – enderland
    Dec 4, 2015 at 16:18
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    @enderland That is all the more reason to keep it on as an alias. It would mean that someone would type in resume and get the expected résumé.
    – cwallenpoole
    Dec 4, 2015 at 16:20
  • @cwallenpoole except most of your edits relate to changing the actual characters in question body/edits...
    – enderland
    Dec 4, 2015 at 16:20
  • Wikipedia's take: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R%C3%A9sum%C3%A9
    – cwallenpoole
    Dec 4, 2015 at 16:21
  • @enderland Not the question at hand :-P
    – cwallenpoole
    Dec 4, 2015 at 16:22
  • Also, should be noted, that while the article you cite does mention that "resume" is common, Wikipedia, freedictionary.com, as well as BOTH dictionaries that post cites use the spelling "résumé" for the name of the entry. This implies that résumé is the more expected spelling.
    – cwallenpoole
    Dec 4, 2015 at 16:24
  • @cwallenpoole Conversely, [Alison Green] and a few other workplace/management bloggers that I've read exclusively use "resume". The résumé tag also looks fairly odd in my opinion.
    – Lilienthal Mod
    Dec 4, 2015 at 16:26
  • The "resume" tag looks more odd in my opinion. It looks like it's defaulting the ASCII instead of unicode.
    – cwallenpoole
    Dec 4, 2015 at 16:29
  • And a cursory look at the Harvard Business Review suggests that résumé is more common among its authors.
    – cwallenpoole
    Dec 4, 2015 at 16:30
  • As a general rule – it is hard to go wrong erring on the side of formal English.
    – cwallenpoole
    Dec 4, 2015 at 16:31
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    @cwallenpoole Updated my post: diacritic marks break tag syntax in questions and answers. Enough of a reason to go for a firm no on this in my opinion.
    – Lilienthal Mod
    Dec 4, 2015 at 16:32
  • @Lilienthal As I mentioned, I checked french.stackexchange.com before asking. Otherwise I would have reported this as a bug. [tag:compléments] works there.
    – cwallenpoole
    Dec 4, 2015 at 16:35
  • @Lilienthal The problem is that résumé is not a tag. The highlighting syntax won't work because the tag doesn't exist. If you were to create a tag flambé you could use [tag:flambé]. Diacritics have nothing to do with it.
    – cwallenpoole
    Dec 4, 2015 at 16:36
  • @cwallenpoole just FYI, as a moderator (or user with lots of rep) I can create tags, and tried on your question here, but it seems on Workplace this is not supported currently.
    – enderland
    Dec 4, 2015 at 16:38
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    Forwarded the "why" to here: meta.stackexchange.com/questions/270362/…
    – cwallenpoole
    Dec 4, 2015 at 16:57
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My thoughts:

As a non-French speaker, I do not have an easy way to make the é character on my Windows keyboard I use at work (at home I have a mac and mac users can fairly easily if they are savvy, but most probably don't realize this?). I will still type "resume" 100% of the time, both for the tag and for text of questions/etc.

I don't really think this matters, either since as you say the documentation suggests either spelling is appropriate.

I also don't really want to start a edit war over British vs American English spelling. My recommendation would be to just let users spell it however they want. If context here was less clear, and it wasn't clear whether users wanted to use it as a verb or the noun, then maybe it would matter more.

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  • The reason I thought we could make this the default is because it would mean that an American with Windows would be able to type resume and the accented word would appear. We have something very similar right now – someone who puts the accents in the words will find that the default removes them. That seems to be a SE setting? bug? though.
    – cwallenpoole
    Dec 11, 2015 at 15:38
  • @cwallenpoole But a person may not want to use the only meaning of the word, it's like the history of the word clbuttic. What if you wanted to actually use the word resume, and not résumé? We'd then see lots of complaining posts about it.
    – cst1992
    Oct 4, 2016 at 12:26
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As a non-American, I call it a CV. I am not familiar with the word résumé in this context. I can certainly understand the word, but I’m not familiar with it, which means that it’s not the first thing that comes to mind when I see resume. I will read that as written, as a word which Collins defines as “to begin again or go on with (something adjourned or interrupted)”. Only when that definition makes no sense do I mentally rewrite it in my head and pick the other definition. This means that every single time I see the word, there’s a brief mental hiccough: my train of thought goes down the wrong path and needs to be recalled. Spelling the word correctly, as résumé, would definitely help that.

The tag should definitely be given the accents, with the non-accented version synonomized. Due to improvements in the tag engine, this is now possible.

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  • (And it’s hardly difficult to type, AltGr+e is not a difficult key combination.)
    – TRiG
    Oct 1, 2016 at 10:59
  • Considering standard American keyboards don't have an AltGr key, yes, it is difficult. There are Alt+xxxx combinations for non-standard characters, but since American English does not typically use accented characters, I would not expect anyone to know what they are.
    – David K
    Oct 3, 2016 at 12:17

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