Hi Sharon, There are no stupid questions. The ? in the middle of a word is just the computer program's interpretation of the German umlaut vowels.... ü ä ö. The appropriate way to type the name with our characters is: ue ae oe... omitting the dots on top of the vowel is not correct. I have a cousin that likes to correct me on this matter. There are some shortcuts to the vowels. Such as.... alt 129 for ü, alt 132 for ä, and alt 148 for ö. Rita ________________________________ From: BANAT <banat-bounces+schiwanore=msn.com@rootsweb.com> on behalf of sharon1215@comcast.net <sharon1215@comcast.net> Sent: Friday, March 24, 2017 4:14 PM To: banat@rootsweb.com Subject: [BANAT-L] About the question marks Hello all, I am going to ask a stupid, or simple question, but it's bothered me since I joined this chat group. When I see a word such as H?pfl in a sentence, or another word, what does the question mark replace? I see that mark quite often and never know what it means. Thank you! Sharon in Seattle ----- Original Message ----- ------------------------------- To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to BANAT-request@rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message