-é - -ée

Some words in English taken from French recently - notably 'fiancé' and 'fiancée' - are still written with the French accents by careful academic writers. The modern trend appears increasingly to ignore the accents. This is quite logical - English after all has no written accents - but displeasing to the traditionally minded among us.

If you want to use the careful, rather old-fashioned style of writing with the French acute accent over the 'e', there is one point to notice. A single accented 'é' is, in French, the masculine form. The equivalent feminine form has two 'e's, only the first of which is carries the written accent - 'ée'. When a man and woman become engaged, he is her fiancé. She is his fiancée.

The same, mutatis mutandis, is true of the only other pair of words I can think of where it might matter - divorcé (a man) and divorcée (a woman). In all other words, we should, in English, follow the French usage - if the sex of the person does not matter, use the masculine form, with one 'é'. But in normal modern usage, just use 'ée' for most words with the '-ee-' sound. (See also -er, -ee.)

To obtain an acute accent in Microsoft Word, you can press the Ctrl key with the apostrophe (') key. Nothing will appear on screen, but when you then type 'e' (or any other letter), it will appear with the accent over it. Or you can use Insert - Symbol, and then search for any accented character you want. See also accent (3) - written.)

(See also -ee for an account of a common criticism of students' writing.)