Misplaced accent mark alert!

In a recent issue of Parade magazine, there was a headline titled Ç'est Magnifique. Look carefully though; notice anything wrong with it?



If you are not familiar with French, there is an unnecessary accent mark (diacritic) underneath the C in C'est. It looks like a hook, or a "5" (which we used to call it in elementary French classes!). The proper term for it is cedilla.
In French c'est is a contraction of ce est which means "this is". There is no need for the C to take a cedilla. It was probably put there by some unknowing editor just to make the phrase look "more French".

The purpose of the cedilla in French is to make sure certain words with a C in it take an S sound, rather than a K sound. For instance, reçu ("received"), requires the cedilla to make the C have an S sound, otherwise the K sound would be assumed since the C precedes a U. The infinitive form of the verb is recevoir, which needs no cedilla since the C is assumed to have the S sound if it precedes an E.