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>I think that when audiences become comfortable with a word in general
>(they see and hear about it everywhere), then writers sometimes
>tighten it up by dropping the hyphen (e.g., on-line to online, e-mail
>to email). "On-screen" really doesn't get the press that "online" and
>"email" does, so that's probably why most writers keep the hyphen.
>Again, that's just a theory, but that must be it, otherwise using the
>spelling "email" would be insane. (In-sane?)
My recollection is that the original spelling was email, and it remained
that way for quite some time -- until the term got into widespread use
and editors started sticking in the hyphen. ...RM
Richard Mateosian <srm -at- cyberpass -dot- net>
Review Editor, IEEE Micro Berkeley, CA
