{"id":2467,"date":"2009-06-02T14:39:59","date_gmt":"2009-06-02T06:39:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pinyin.info\/news\/?p=2467"},"modified":"2015-12-15T14:49:52","modified_gmt":"2015-12-15T06:49:52","slug":"tiananmen-not-tiananmen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pinyin.info\/news\/2009\/tiananmen-not-tiananmen\/","title":{"rendered":"Tian’anmen, not Tiananmen"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’m certainly not expecting the Western media to start writing Tiān’ānmén (天安門\/天安门) with tone marks. But its<\/span> it’s not like the apostrophe<\/em> is an obscure glyph to be found only in specialist typefaces that dig deep into Unicode, the sort of thing that might require an English form separate from the Pinyin one. <\/p>\n

Microsoft Word certainly isn’t helping matters, as it flags the correct<\/em> form (Tian’anmen) as a misspelling but does not flag the apostrophe-less form (Tiananmen). <\/p>\n

\"screenshot<\/div>\n

Indeed, if you ask the program to help you with the supposedly misspelled “Tian’anmen”, it suggests “Tiananmen”. <\/p>\n

\"screen<\/div>\n

So my guess would be that the “Tiananmen” form is the result of a combination of (1) the Cupertino effect<\/a>, (2) laziness, and (3) people thinking that Tian’anmen<\/em> “looks funny”.<\/p>\n

Ugh.<\/p>\n

And as long as I’m on this, it’s not Tian An Men, TianAnMen, Tienanmen, Tianan men, etc., either. <\/p>\n

But, no, I don’t expect this will do much good; and if I ever work myself into a case of apostrophe rage<\/a> it will probably be for other names. <\/p>\n

—<\/p>\n

further reading: <\/p>\n