Re: e-mail or email?

[Timothy Schablin <timothy -at- ESKIMO -dot- COM>]

Mybe we should just spell it as electronic mail instead of email, e-mail,
or E-mail.    :>

On Mon, 23 Jan 1995, Bill Burns wrote:

> Tim McGee said:

> >The trend will, most likely, be toward omitting the hyphen for the same
 reason
> that "high school" became "high-school" became "highschool."

> I'm not sure which dictionary you're using, but my online (there's a neologism
> for you) dictionary spells "high school" as two words.  In fact, I've never
> seen the term spelled as one word (unless as a misspelling) or as a hyphenated
> term (unless the words were used as a compound adjective).  No doubt the
> continued use of that compound could possibly evolve into a single term.  The
> chances for e-mail are more likely, especially since many people never give
> a second thought to what the "e" stands for.  However, English also has a
> tradition of maintaining spelling conventions even when they no longer
 represent
> standard pronunciation (e.g. cough, though, colonel).

> I think the point was made earlier about penultimate stress.  Since we stress
> the first letter and because we'd most likely not want to try to accelerate
> the degradation of the term from "ee-mail" to "ehmail," we should separate the
> "e" from mail with a hyphen.  Reserving this form will also help maintain the
> metaphor from which the term originated (i.e. electronic mail).

> Bill Burns                            *
> Assm. Technical Writer/Editor         *       "Purgamentum init,
> Micron Technology, Inc.               *       exit purgamentum."
> Boise, ID                             *
> WBURNS -at- VAX -dot- MICRON -dot- COM                 *        Henricus Barbatus