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I have seen some questions regarding Déjà Dup that use accented characters ("Déjà Dup") and some that don't ("Deja Dup"). Which way is preferable?

Does using accented characters make questions harder to find via search?

Edit from Oli to the SE team

There is a search "bug" here. In my/Google's opinion when you index and search, you should ignore any accents. The current SE search is very strict with them.

To test, just compare the results of searching for déjà and deja

These should both show the same list IMO.

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    +1 for oli's edit. would solve this all issue.
    – Bruno Pereira
    Commented Oct 16, 2011 at 0:53
  • @oded Does the edit mean this will not be implemented?
    – Dan
    Commented Jul 17, 2014 at 11:12
  • @Dan - it just means this isn't a software bug in the Stack Exchange system. The search engine works for both terms.
    – Oded Staff
    Commented Jul 17, 2014 at 11:17
  • @Oded In that case, can it be changed to a feature request? It would be nice if searching for déjà or deja would yield the same results.
    – Dan
    Commented Jul 17, 2014 at 11:21

5 Answers 5

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Does using accented characters make questions harder to find via search?

Yes, it seems to. If you search with accents the accented posts show. If you search without accents the posts without accents show. This is bad.

It should be possible for StackExchange to Anglicise the titles when they're indexed (and searched) so no punctuation or accent interferes with things. This is what Google does and it works pretty well.

I'll convert your post into a bug report and we'll see what happens.

But aside from the technical issue, I don't have any issue with people using either. Some people are going to be more correct but the vast majority are going to type what their keyboards [easily] allow them to do.

In terms of moderation/editing to bring all posts into one standard, it's not worth the effort. That time is better spent doing actual edits that help people, or posting answers.

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  • FWIW: the technical part is (mostly) solved in cross-platform libraries like ICU that can (help) convert accented characters to their base character.
    – JanC
    Commented Nov 5, 2011 at 19:13
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I would suggest preferring the accented version (Déjà Dup) since that's the way it is spelled on the project's Launchpad page and within the program's own Debian packaging.

As you can see here, this doesn't seem to hurt search engine results at all:

http://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Aaskubuntu.com+D%C3%A9j%C3%A0+Dup

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Well the name is Déjà Dup, doing a search without the accented characters will return different results so yeah, its makes it harder. Editing the posts seems hard and tedious but its the correct thing to do, that's the project name, it should be used.

btw, searching in google for "askubuntu Déjà Dup" and "askubuntu deja dup" return same results.

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I'd say Deja Dup, or even backup.

Here's why:

  • It's known as Backup in 11.10.

Thanks for the bug, and you are right that it might create a bit of confusion, but the change is intentional.

Starting with release 20, the goal is to be a more integrated and invisible part of the user experience. More a feature of the OS than a standalone app. Part of that is debranding.

Via a Deja Dup bug report, emphasis mine - Typing Déjà Dup on a keyboard isn't easy.

  • 99.9999999999999 (ok, you get the idea)% of the people who go to google are going to type in Deja Dup, not Déjà Dup. Why? See my first reason. Also, if/when they see Déjà Dup, some people (primarily those that don't have english as a primary language) are going to be confused. I know I would be.

  • I'm not going to go back and change Deja Dup to Déjà Dup in every question. :P

  • Why use Déjà Dup? Yes it's the Official Name, but the only times I've seen it written that way are on . . . the official project docs. Never seen it accented like that anywhere else.

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    Typing áçcéńted characters is hard, but only for English speakers; so that’s not a valid reason...
    – fitojb
    Commented Oct 16, 2011 at 14:48
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    @Fitoschido However, Stack Exchange/Ask Ubuntu is primarily English.
    – jrg
    Commented Oct 16, 2011 at 20:52
  • ¿Qué dices? :D Anyway, you can always enable an alternative keyboard layout like US International with dead keys. And..... most AskUbuntu users also speak another language. So...
    – fitojb
    Commented Oct 17, 2011 at 10:16
  • I'd agree that many English speakers here are at least bilingual, but I think most wouldn't add accents when there's a case like this (i.e., both unaccented and accented orthography is well-represented).
    – belacqua
    Commented Oct 20, 2011 at 19:03
  • @belacqua I agree on that, I’m not condemning users that don’t add diacritics. ;)
    – fitojb
    Commented Oct 21, 2011 at 6:34
  • @Fitoschido: "US International with AltGr dead keys" is actually the default in Ubuntu, so entering accents shouldn't be hard for most English-speaking users either...
    – JanC
    Commented Nov 5, 2011 at 19:11
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See this thing depends on the people discussing it and on the search engine/site you using like on Google it hardly makes any difference but if you are having problems you may use the áçcéńted characters

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