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Marquis Diamonds Chard 24 Carat Home Page

Marquise Diamond
Marquise Diamond

Marquis or Marquise?
Marquis is a mis-spelling of marquise. You may have found this page by searching for "marquis diamonds" or similar, and if you are not a diamond specialist, you may not have known this.
You would probably expect jewellers and diamond professionals to know the difference, but sadly, they either don't know or don't care. When we see errors like this, we often use Google to check percentages. Here is the result of our quick Google survey:
Search TermResultsPercentage
Marquis Diamonds333,00015.86
Marquise Diamonds2,080,000100*
Marquis Diamond998,00057.69
Marquise Diamond1,730,000100*

Notes
100* = Taken as the norm in each case.
It appears that up to 57.69% of web pages intending to refer to "marquise diamond" are incorrectly spelling it as "marquis diamond". While this figure astounded us, it probably should not have done, because in general we notice a high degree of ignorance of basic facts and information among many of our competitors in the jewellery industry.
To be more accurate, we should compare using boolean operators and search for marquis OR marquise diamond, etc., but this was never intended to be a precise scientific survey, simply a quick indication.
We would recommend buying your marquise diamond from somebody like us, who at least knows how to spell what they are offering for sale!

Marquise Diamonds
The following is a copy of our original marquise diamonds page, but you may wish to refer to the original, as it may get updated more frequently.

The Marquise
The marquise cut, also called navette or boat shape, diamond is a variation of the round brilliant cut. It could be considered as a round brilliant cut which has been stretched out into an oval with pointed ends, although this is a rather unscientific description. The modern round brilliant cut is generally the best cut for diamonds, and justly remains the most popular. Modified brilliant cuts, such as the marquise shape can at best approach the brilliance and sparkle of a perfect round brilliant cut, but if they are badly proportioned, it is also easy for them to lose brilliance. In addition, marquise shapes can be too fat, too thin, or just right, although personal preference may colour an individual's view of the precise outline.

Weight Retention
The most usual reason for a diamond cutter to fashion a fancy shape rather than a circular one, is to retain the maximum weight. If the cutter owns a rough stone which will retain much more weight as a marquise shape than as a round, only then he is likely to choose the marquise shape. We have already stated that marquise shapes are not as brilliant as round diamonds of the same quality. We would advise all our viewers to read our round brilliant cut page first, and perhaps some of our other pages about cut and proportion. Even the best proportioned marquise shape will not be quite as sparkly as the best round brilliant. Logically and mathematically, a non-round diamond cannot be perfectly proportioned. Badly proportioned marquises will look worse than a correspondingly badly proportioned round stone.

Bow Tie Effect
Marquise diamonds often suffer from the "bow-tie" effect, as do pear and oval shapes to some extent. Although diamond cutters try hard to avoid or minimise this effect, it is almost impossible to avoid completely. It manifests itself as a dark area across the middle of the width of the diamond which looks just like a black or darkly coloured bow tie, hence the name. As it happens, the marquise shaped diamond shown on this page is pretty well proportioned, and the bow tie effect cannot be seen very clearly. We will try to find a better example, or should that be a worse example?
Needless to say, when acquiring a marquise shape diamond, if you have a choice, try to find one without too much of a bow tie.

Prices
The price per carat of fancy shaped diamonds is almost always less than the price for similar quality round brilliant cuts, although some jewellers will try to charge more if they can get away with it! In fairness, though we should add that because of the greater variability of marquise shapes compared with rounds, it is more difficult to sort and source matching pairs, sets or "layouts" of marquise shapes. This sorting is more labour intensive, and does add to the cost of the diamonds. It still remains true that larger, better quality individual marquise shaped diamonds should normally cost about 10 to 20% below the cost of equivalent quality round brilliants.

Favourite Shape
If your favourite shape of diamond is a marquise shape, please don't allow our comments to deter you from your dream diamond, we are simply trying to make you aware of the differences. Also the marquise shaped outline can look better than a circular one in items such as pendants and drop ear-rings. Another good use for marquise shapes is as shoulder stones for a major centre stone, or in a cluster around a larger diamond.

What No Vanilla?
When we came to create this page, our best marquise shape diamond photograph was of an intense yellow coloured diamond, as you can see. We will try to add a white (colourless) marquise shape diamond image when we get time.

Coloured Diamonds
You cannot help but notice that our photograph is of a fancy yellow diamond. Because the primary attraction is its startling and unusual colour, rather than its brilliance, the fact that it is marquise shaped may have enhanced rather than detracted from its beauty. Similar considerations would apply to most fancy coloured diamonds.

Illiterate Jewellers & Poor Spellers
You would think that those in the jewellery industry would learn the correct spelling of words such as marquise, wouldn't you? While we realise that typo's will always occur, it continues to astound us that so many manage to mis-spell this word as marquis. A marquis is "a nobleman ranking below a duke and above an earl or a count".
Searching Google for the term "marquise diamonds" and "marquis diamonds" found 48,000 results for the correct version, and 12,700 for the incorrect. Over 20% of web authors showing their expertise in web pages cannot spell marquise correctly. We suggest you avoid buying a marquise diamond from somebody who is so inexpert that he cannot even spell the word properly.

Marquise Diamonds
Our original marquise diamonds page.

More About Cut & Shape of Diamonds


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