Huh, didn't know that, but you're right (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_alphabet#Diacritics). I declare myself out-pedanted :)

Metacomment: I find it amusing that I got more upvotes for providing attribution for a refutation of my own minor criticism of Etude than for my original comment actually discussing Etude.

I guess I'm being rewarded for admitting and embracing my own wrongness!

Yeah, but they are only because it's a pain to type them on the french AZERTY keyboard: it doesn't have an easy to find dead key for the acute accent.

So either you type an accent-less character, or you waste 10mn looking for a way to have the accent in.

As far as the Académie Française is concerned, diacritics are not optional.

:-)

For technical reason though, the Académie clearly states diacritics are not optional. So it should be Étude indeed.