Some Living History Facts &
Other Useful"tid-bits."

If you chosen a name like Hölper, Kühlmann, Küster, Müller, and even Mäller. OK, so . . . relevance? Especially in rendering names, these are very important. In German, "ö" does not equal "o"; umlauts are not optional. While most Americans think they're cute little decorators put willy-nilly in words to decorate them an make them look "European," these characters are, in fact, different letters in the German alphabet.

How to do umlauts on your PC. There are basically three ways to acomplish this.

Step 1.With the "num lock" on, when you want to add the umlauted character, press and hold the "Alt" key and type the appriopriate code. When you release "Alt," the character will appear.

Ä = Alt + 0196
Ö = Alt + 0214
Ü = Alt + 0220
ä = Alt + 0228
ö = Alt + 0246
ü = Alt + 0252
ß (double "s" character)= Alt + 0223

Sounds sort of awkward--it's not. I hung these codes on my monitor for awhile and, after a bit, had them memorized.

Step 2. If you cannot do this you may wish to try using the "Character Map." Go to your [START] button, to [PROGRAMS] to [ACCESSORIES] to [SYSTEM TOOLS] to [CHARACTER MAP] then choose the proper umlaut, hit [SELECT] then [COPY] and then paste into your desired text.

Step 3. As an alternative, it is also possible to "create" an umlaut with only letters. You simply add an "e" to the umlauted letter--e.g., ü = ue and ö = oe. The Germans did this in telegrams and on typewriters w/o umlaut keys. It is, BTW, what an umlaut really is. Since the combination occurred in German frequently, they developed a shortcut. Early fonts had a small "e" superscripted directly above the modified letter; this eventually "morphed" into the umlaut. Not preferred—if your name is "Söeft" it is really only correctly rendered as such—but far better than ignoring the umlaut and rendering it "Soft."

Just to let you know that this does not just apply to names; if the German term has an umlaut, it should always be renderd as such. Hence, a cap is a "Mütze," not a "Mutz."