Monday, December 27, 2021

Pronouncing omicron again

“What is this penchant for using Greek to designate disasters?” In The New Yorker, Mary Norris looks at omicron and other letters.

I noticed a setence that needs improvement:

Though there is no universal agreement about it, many American classicists pronounce omicron with a short “o,” as in “om,” and omega with a long “o,” like an Irish surname: O’Mega.
As in “om”? I think that “om” here is too easily misread as the word om, pronounced with a long o : \ ˈōm \. Clearer:
Though there is no universal agreement about it, many American classicists pronounce omicron with a short o, as in Tom, and omega with a long o, like an Irish surname: O’Mega.
Tom goes nicely with O’Mega too.

A related post
How to pronounce omicron

[Why I added italics: “When a word or term is not used functionally but is referred to as the word or term itself, it is either italicized or enclosed in quotation marks": The Chicago Manual of Style (7.63). I replaced the quotation marks with italics for consistency. The New Yorker of course doesn’t use italics. The important change here is Tom for om.]

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