Comments on: I don’t want e-mail anymore

By: mighty red pen

mighty red pen — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 20:04:00 +0000

I lost this argument when revising the styleguide at my job and we stuck with e-mail (but did change from Web site to website).For what it’s worth, Bill Walsh asserts in “Lapsing into a Comma” that “No initial-based term in the history of the English language has ever evolved to form a solid word–a few are split and the rest are hyphenated” eg: A-frame, B-movie, H-bomb, K car, X-ray and so on.

By: Autumn

Autumn — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 16:32:00 +0000

I like “email.” I think the word has been used enough to qualify for promotion to the non-hyphen category–it’s easily recognizable without the hyphen, and I don’t think it loses any clarity. But the trouble begins when people see “email” and think those pesky hyphens are finally a thing of the past, and start jamming all sorts of words together willy-nilly. Or willynilly, as it were.

By: rpmason

rpmason — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 14:32:00 +0000

AP says that e-mail “…is also the preference of many newspapers.” Isn’t that rather circular logic? Many newspapers use the AP Stylebook as their primary style guide.

By: JD

JD — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 14:19:00 +0000

House style on the magazine I work for is ‘e-mail’, but my own personal preference is ‘email’. This leaves me terminally confused and no doubt somewhat inconsistent.

By: pauldwaite

pauldwaite — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 22:09:00 +0000

I was strongly against “email” for a long time, because I didn’t think there was any precedent in English for pronouncing it “eeemail” instead of “emmail”. Then I remembered “emu”, and I’m sure there are others.

I personally prefer “e-mail”, but I don’t bristle at “email”. I think Strunk and White notes that many words that have been joined with hyphens have ended up merged.

By: Gez

Gez — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 20:33:00 +0000

Wrong site; correct observation.

By: Grant Barrett

Grant Barrett — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 20:11:00 +0000

Oops. I’m not on the SPOGG site. I don’t know what I was thinking with the “Martha.”

By: Grant Barrett

Grant Barrett — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 20:10:00 +0000

Martha, it wasn’t Oxford English Dictionary that dropped so many hyphens, it was the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary. They are different books with different editorial policies, different editorial teams, different update cycles, and divergent content.

By: Bill

Bill — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 20:03:00 +0000

I agree the hyphen should be dropped. Of e-book, e-commerce, e-shopping and e-business, I only see e-commerce in wide usage. The argument for consistency is a weak one.