Accent grave as in Egbert Souse (see at about 1:40). They for some reason spell it with an acute accent where you see it written.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9K8WtjelXEg

I do agree, though, that the "grave accent" can be a bother. I don't know how many times I've had to go back to a previous question to remove it from my answer. :P

I try and avoid all diacritical marks in multiple choice answers, too. When playing in Flash mode or quiz mode, diacriticals often create confusing renderings on the screen (for instance, replacing the letter with its ASCII code).

Even if the answer is "piñata", generally, a fill in the blank answer will have it as "pinata", as the main language on this site is English, and therefore the majority of players do not even have a keyboard with such symbols. Granted, there are programs that allow for symbol choices for each letter (similar to what happens if you hold down a letter on an iPod), and there is also the "alt+164" trick for the ñ, but that still makes things extremely complicated when playing hourlies. It's hard enough when playing a quiz!

So ya, I avoid diacritical marks as often as possible as well.

FITBs shouldn't have any diacritical marks at all, for the same reason they shouldn't have punctuation. If you come across one, please send a correction note and we'll change it to multiple choice. There, even if something does go wonky, it's usually possible to figure out what was meant.

The accent grave is in discussion as being part of what a Player accidentally types in a FitB, not that any Author has included it in their templated answer.

Spot on. Being an English language site we go with the English spellings of things and places. If we were to use the original language for everything I'd be spending the rest of my life changing all the quizzes on Finland to Suomi, every mention of Rome to Roma, every hint of Munich to München, and every quiz that mentions Switzerland to four different languages. Then I would lose what little remaining sanity I have.

Ha, that sounds like a royal pain, Tizzy. Haha.

I am glad I have seen this Looney_Tunes, so just to be clear as I am not a very experienced quiz writer, I am actually writing a quiz on famous Spaniards and some of the names/cities used have the accent grave, so I understand from your post and others now, that I should not put an accent on any of them, not even in the info sect. in order to be safe.

The extra information sections of the templates seem to be more flexible- the accents are not as likely to do strange things and turn into other symbols. But it is definitely a good idea to avoid them completely in questions and answers (and they are not allowed in Fill in the Blank answers, as has been mentioned above). The quiz may look fine for a while, but then little boxes and question marks start to replace the accented letters, even in the original template, not just for players using Flash mode.

Thanks looney_tunes and Tizzabelle. Excellent advice as usual.

Thank you very much for your information, I will make sure that I delete them before doing my template.

I will usually put a disclaimer in the intro to apologize that special characters are not included and hopefully everyone is understanding about it.

I feel you're all special characters, even if it can only be said here.

All right. I understand that if I have an error on a FITB question it MUST be my fault, and that it doesn't matter if it is lower or upper case. However, take a look at this one. There is no other mark on the answer. The answer is spelled correctly. It is one of the two answers allowed. The only difference I can see is that I didn't use upper case on the first letter of the name.

Now, yes, he/she asks for surname. I gave both. However, both are shown as answers so...

Now, I'm really confused. Yes, I know, that's nothing new for me.



4. What is the surname of the American comic silent-film actor who starred in the film, 'The General'(1926)?
Your answer: buster keaton

Accepted answers were: Keaton

Buster Keaton

52% of FunTrivia players have answered this question correctly in the past.
Question by player Quizzical. (play this quiz!) I see an error - submit correction...

Enter your correction and click submit. You will remain on this page.

Typo/spelling/grammar Disputing Answer

Clicking submit will NOT take you to a new page:

Are you positive you didn't add a second space in between the names? Maybe there is two spaces in the accepted answer as well, and an editor would have to check that.

The correct answer to that question was one word. You've written two words.
The hint was - Last Name Only.

From what you have copied it appears that the accepted answers includes only Keaton.
Then the very brief interesting info says Buster Keaton. If both were acceptable answers they would be shown together, with a separator, but not on different lines.

Did you send a correction note? If you did the category editors will be able to either add the full name as an option, or check for extra spaces in the event that it is already given.

I must say, however, that as the question asked for the surname only, there really is no correction to be made.


Spanishliz (Editor in Movies, Geography, Brain Teasers & Crosswords)

Spanish Liz,

Thanks for the obvious answer that I didn't even see. I figured the writer had shown both as answers. I never thought that the two words would be II. That's easy II!!

No, of course I didn't send a correction note. I don't use those much since I feel the editors are busy enough as it is. Instead, I came here because I felt there would be someone who could straighten me out.

And you have.

I appreciate it.

Lee

If you find an error, send a correction note. Half the time it won't reach the editors (the author will fix it), and even if it does reach them, it improves the site. Just don't send fake corrections (just a reminder - I'm not saying you would).

I am an editor, and it is our job to fix errors. It is a lot easier if you send it through the Correction Note link, as it will take us directly to the offending quiz. In this case it is a very simple fix, and should be back online within seconds.

Though you see the answer as having a capital K to start the answer and that there are two accepted answers (Keaton and keaton), I think there are really over a hundred answers that would be accepted based on the fact that the FT answer checker ignores Upper and Lower case. I believe you'd be correct for the following:
keatoN, keatON, keaTON, keATON. kEATON, KEATON, keatOn keaTOn, keaToN, ..., KEATon. The location of the Upper or Lower by position shouldn't matter. All Alphas are assigned an ASCII code number and it is the code number the computer reads. If there is programming which tells the computer to ignore the case then alphas will be read and adjusted from Code or Code+2 to just Code (That's the difference between U&L case as far as ASCII numbers go). They then adjust a +2 by doing a -2 to make it just plain Code# (or by adding a +2 to a plain Code to make it Code+2, depending on whether you want the printed output to be U or L). Say E is ASCII code 34 then small e would be ASCII code 36. The computer when reading your input of an E in a place where we consider the proper input to be e, would accept the e as correct because it will have changed the 36 to a 34 before deciding yes/no, 0/1 in the position. Then all the adjusted or left alone ASCII numbers are read to be correct or incorrect if they match a sequence of ASCII codes such as 34,22,35,17,18 (also good would be 36,24,37,19,20 which are all code+2 numbers) If only a beginning cap was required in the example then the sequence would have to read 34,24,37,19,20 to be read as a correct answer. I think that's a close description of what happens and why programmers tend to drool often.

All correction notes reach an editor - if an author makes the change themselves, an editor will check to make sure that the change addresses the issue (or non-issue) appropriately. And, of course, there are many quizzes online whose authors are no longer active - I handled a correction note sent to an author who hadn't been here for over 3700 days (that's more than 10 years) the other day. If it had been handled as a direct message, nothing would ever have happened. Send correction notes, please, whenever you think there is an actual error (but not for suggestions as to how a question or its extra information could be better, we don't have time to rewrite all those old quizzes and bring them up to the standard we expect now).

Chiming in - please send correction notes. The way our system is set up, fixing something like this via CN takes seconds; otherwise it's a long slog to find the problem, or, more likely, we never even know there is a problem at all, and it never gets fixed.

Adding my voice to the plea to please send a correction note, for the reasons already stated.