RE: Polite international e-mail

[Kevin McLauchlan <KMcLauchlan -at- chrysalis-its -dot- com>]

Well, ackshully...

Since Chris K. DID receive proper accented characters, 
is there anybody on the list who DID NOT? That would 
be significant, and apropos.

I was nudged into making my query when my wife sent 
the same characters to me from her office, where 
they use Lotus Notes for e-mail.  In my Outlook, 
with exactly the same settings that I used to send 
to you folks, I received HER text with question marks 
in place of all the accented characters (e-accent-aigu, 
e-accent-grave, e-circumflex, plus c-cedille and 
a's with accents).  
It happens that she uses French-Canadian keyboard. 
I use US-English, if that matters. She types her 
accented characters directly. I use [Alt]-130, etc.

She corresponds frequently with her mother, and 
reports accented-character problems.  Her Mom is 
a translator, and may soon be doing some work for 
my company. While I'm not fluent, I can certainly 
read her French and recognize where accents are 
supposed to be, but if Mom-in-Law does a bunch of 
pages, I really don't want to spend a lot of time 
re-inserting accented characters when I pull her 
Word text into Frame.  Similarly, if we pass small 
chunks back and forth during e-mail discussions, 
I'd rather avoid problems where I can, and similarly 
again, when we start dealing with Spanish and 
German translation, I'd like to know what to 
anticipate and how best to get along with those folk.

So again, I certainly know how to put my lips 
together and blow accents (western, anyway), but 
I'm rarely confident that the recipient gets 'em 
as I thought I sent 'em, or that I'll get 'em 
back the way the other party intends to send... 
if you see what I mean.

Thanks for your interest.  It all helps to flesh 
out the picture.

I'll look into that document that Sandy mentioned, 
but I'm looking to be a follower, not a leader in 
this context (i.e., not much chance of me evangelizing 
for some standard or other).

Regards to all,

/k