Re: Dumb question: is it "email", "Email", "e-mail", or "E-mail"

[Joel <eleysium -at- gmail -dot- com>]

>From the book "Wired Style" which now reads like a relic of the
dot-com era (published in 1996):

"We originally used a hyphen to underscore the trace of the word
electronic, but as email caught on, and as more and more people
started spending more and more time on the Net, e-mail became more and
more anachronistic. An email query on how to style the word elicited
these replies from Wired editors:

'Who doesn't type email in the heat of an electronic moment? But I
still argue for hyphens when a single letter is pronounced as a
syllable." (Constance Hale)
"The lexical tides are flowing against us. I suspect email will become
standard." (Gary Wolf)
"It just seems like hyphens ultimately vanish; words are concatenated;
it's the way of the world. Electronic mail became e-mail became
email." (Louis Rossetto)"

Joel


On Fri, Jan 9, 2009 at 9:41 AM, Robert Hodgins <ehodgins -at- telusplanet -dot- net> wrote:
> On Fri, 2009-01-09 at 08:50 -0500, Dan Goldstein wrote:
>> Hi Charles,
>>
>> I agree with you that "email" can be easier for the writer.
>>
>> Various posters have noted that "e-mail" can be easier for the reader.
>>
>> Since my job is to make things easier for the reader, I'm sticking with
>> "e-mail."
>
> Talk about topical. Today's Dilbert cartoon (http://www.dilbert.com/)
> had the term under discussion in it.
>
> Maybe, it was the lack of caffeine in the system or the early hour, but
> this writer (who prefers to use "email") did find "e-mail" easier to
> read.
>
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