not use these pointed forms in the main table above, being among the details codified in the early 20th century. In the traditional Yiddish orthographies where these letters are not pointed, the vowel is indicated by preceding it with a shtumer alef (reducing the use of which was a major focus of the normative efforts). The single and digraph forms of, for example, vov can be separated either with a dot or an embedded alef as or (vu – "where"). Although only the former spelling is consistent with the SYO and appears in Uriel Weinreich's dictionary, he uses the unpointed alternative exclusively in his own "Say it in Yiddish" (), a phrase book that contains the word in a large number of "Where is...?" queries and was published when the rules had already been well established. A further graphic example of this distinction is seen in the official announcement, on 14 November 1997, of a change in editorial policy for the prominent Yiddish periodical, (forverts – "Yiddish Forward"). It was first during that year that they adopted the YIVO orthography. The previous editorial position overtly opposed any such change and the following is included in the explanation of the shift (quoted in full in Schaechter 1999, p. 109): And then we removed the alef in the words [yid] and [yidish] (previously and ) and [yingl] (previously ), and now will spell the words with a khirik under the second yud as: ‎, and . The appearance of three alternate spellings for the name of the Yiddish language in a statement intended to describe its orthographic standardization might not require any comment if it were not for the clear indication that the cardinal representation — — was neither the older nor the newer editorial preference. Regardless of the intent of that statement, a word-initial yud is consonantal and an adjacent yud is vocalic in all Yiddish orthographic systems, as is the constraint on a word initial tsvey yudn diphthong. Pointing the second yud in is therefore, indeed, redundant. The spelling also illustrates some of the dialectic breadth of the Yiddish language, the name of which is both written and pronounced with and without an initial consonant. It may also be useful to note that in earlier texts, a single vov in word-initial position was often used to indicate (a reflex of the German use of v to denote ). Finally, letters