During the construction of this website and its maintenance since it first opened on 10th March 2000, it has become apparent that certain words associated with the events surrounding Oradour-sur-Glane have and still do, cause confusion as to their correct spelling. This short list shows the true spellings using British English on the left of the page in purple text, along with their common misspellings to the right.
At the foot of this page is a list of the ALT codes needed on a UK English language keyboard to be able to print the various accents and umlauts used in both French and German words on this website.
European date convention:
The date convention used throughout this website is that of Britain, France and Germany, so that 10-6-1944 means the 10th of June 1944 and not October 6th 1944. It is noteworthy that official documents written within the US military should also follow the British, French and German date convention; why this is I do not know.
English spelling convention:
All the English language spelling used on this website follows British English conventions, not American English; for example, "centre" not "center", "honour" not "honor", "colour" not "color", "armour" not "armor" and "favourites" not "favorites" (except for the reference to the favicon on the page dealing with The Favicon for this website which follows the Microsoft spelling).
Commonly misspelled words:
Diekmann ..... Dickmann, or Dieckmann (these three spellings are common in the literature of Oradour and indeed Diekmann, Dickmann and Dieckmann are all valid surnames, as the reading of a German telephone directory will quickly show).
Führer ..... Fuhrer, or Fuehrer (the latter spelling is an attempt to give the correct pronunciation without the ü umlaut, which can be had by holding down the ALT key and entering 129 on the numeric keypad)
Der Führer ..... Der Fuhrer, or Der Fuehrer (see note above for Führer)
Sturmbannführer ..... Sturmbannfuhrer, or Sturmbannfuehrer (see note above for Führer)
Kämpfe ..... Kampfe, or Kaempfe (the latter spelling is an attempt to give the correct pronunciation without the ä umlaut, which can had by holding down the ALT key and entering 132 on the numeric keypad)
Centre de la Mémoire ..... Centre de la Memoire (the é accent is given by holding down the ALT key and entering 130 on the numeric keypad)
Oradour-sur-Glane ..... Oradour sur Glane (I am taking the spelling and punctuation from the Michelin maps and guides as being correct and they show it with the hyphens. The literature from the Centre de la Mémoire in Oradour itself shows it with the hyphens, although it seems quite common for authors, even French ones, to spell it without).
Accents:
Keyboard codes for French and German characters used on this website. To use these codes, hold down the ALT key to the right of the spacebar and enter the number shown using the Numeric Keypad (not the number keys at the top of the keyboard).
German characters ...
ä ..... ALT+132 Ä ..... ALT+142
ö ..... ALT+148 Ö ..... ALT+153
ü ..... ALT+129 Ü ..... ALT+154
ß ..... ALT+225 (called the "Eszett" and used to show double "s" in written German). Note: this is not the same as the "Sig runes" to give the "SS" as in the Waffen-SS.
French characters ...
é ..... ALT+130 è ..... ALT+138 (In French it is common to write capital letters without accents).
There are many more French accents that those shown above, if you want any more, do a search on Google or Yahoo! (or your favourite search engine) using the words "French Accents" and you will find plenty of websites detailing all the subtleties.
© Michael Williams ... revised February 2007