Hi everybody, here is a frivolous question only tangentially related to category theory. Does anyone know why it is common, in papers on logic, semantics, and category theory, to spell the word "role" the French way, i.e., with a circumflex accent? I am taking about the idiom "to play a role", as in, "in this definition, x and y play symmetric r\^oles". Sometimes it is also used as in "the r\^ole of x is ...". As far as I can tell, the accented spelling is a strange ideosyncrasy, given that the word "role", without the accent, is a perfectly acceptable, and very common, English word. Here are some examples I collected a few years ago: How big a role did politics play? -Los Angeles Times, March 27, 2002 Huge bomb could play role in Iraq. -The Guardian, March 13, 2003 Australia intends to play a role in [...] Iraq, The Australian, 4/15/2003 A movie in which Nicole Kidman could play the lead role -Business Times, 1/16/3 Genetics play a big role in your health. -Citizen-Times.com, April 11, 2003 Linux prepares to play broader role in embedded systems. -EETimes, 6/11/2001 The UN would play a central role in running the country. -Guardian, 4/10/2003 His role is to lead the paddlers through the race -Waterfront News, Oct 2007 How oil plays a role in an invasion of Iraq. -YellowTimes.org, Jan 22, 2003 I realize that Merriam Webster's Dictionary allows "r\^ole" as an alternate spelling (the Oxford English Dictionary does not, as far as I can see online). However, I have never seen it spelled with the circumflex accent anywhere outside of mathematics. So why is it that so many mathematical authors spell it that way? One explanation would be that the authors are French; however, this does not seem to be empirically true. I have most often seen the spelling used by non-French authors. Another possible explanation is that the word "r\^ole" has a technical meaning that differentiates it from "role". However, I can't imagine what it would be. Maybe this habit has been passed on for generations. Can it perhaps be traced back to a misspelling in some influential article? -- Peter