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Subject:Re: web site or website; e-mail or email From:Jo Francis Byrd <jbyrd -at- byrdwrites -dot- com> To:Christi <christi -at- sageinst -dot- COM> Date:Fri, 19 May 2000 12:05:17 -0500
Christi,
You have just convinced me to change my e-mail and Web site ways!
VERY good explanations and rationale.
Jo Byrd
Christi wrote:
on 5/19/00 6:13 AM, Charter, Tara M. wrote:
> Web site
> e-mail
>
> (according to the Microsoft Manual of Style and the Microsoft Dictionary)
Oh no. I fear I have to throw myself off a bridge. I can't believe that
Microsoft and I have come to agree without even trying!
First, Web site.
As Dick M. put it: " World Wide Web is a proper noun. So we write about our
Web-enabled application, Web-powered technology, etc., using Web as shorthand
for World Wide Web."
Last, e-mail.
I am a recent convert to the hyphenated style. I used to be part of the "email"
camp. Here are some excerpts of the arguments that convinced me.
From Bill Walsh's at "The Curmudgeon's Style Book" at The Slot
<http://www.theslot.com/>: 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. Look at A-frame, B-movie, C-rations, D-Day, E- (uh, skip that
one), F layer, G-string, H-bomb, I-beam, J-school, K car, L-shaped, N-word,
O-ring, Q rating, S-connector, T-bill, U-joint, X-ray,
Y-chromosome, Z particle and dozens of other such compounds.
email is the French word for enamel (with some accent that I don't know off the
top of my head).
But this, for me, was the strongest reasoning:
If "email" is acceptable, then "ecommerce" and "etrade" and others are sure to
follow, which is certain to cause confusion every time a word appears that
starts with the letter "e." The reader might pause and wonder if it's some new
"e" coinage instead of the ordinary word. Do we want readers to see "equip" and
wonder, even for an instant, if it refers to an on-line joke? There are many
words where this could happen (elapse, emerge, emotion, epaulette, epic,
election, elude, etc.). Your imagination can provide possible "e" meanings for
these words.
-Drew Bryan
Christi Carew
Technical Writer
Sage Instruments
Freedom, CA, USA
www.sageinst.com
- Learn from the mistakes of others. You can't live long enough to make them all
yourself.
