I discovered my computer has a spelling checker, which is kool, but when I type email, it suggests I correct it to e-mail, or E-mail. Since this is a fairly new word, who is the numbskull that decided to send a finger to the NE corner of the keyboard to type that dash thingy. And smack twice the guy (?) who thought it would be a good idea to capitalize the E. Two moves when only one is needed? If you could carry one bag of groceries into the house, would you split it into two bags and make two trips? Has anyone started a movement to make: email, the standard. It’s the simplest and most logical way to spell the word?
Preferred spellings are not determined by typing convenience. One would hope some semblance of thought regarding the spoken word would be relevant, too. “Email” would be pronounced phonetically something like “ehmale.” The hyphen makes the word adhere more closely to its pronunciation: “eemale.”
Christ, what an imagination I’ve got…
It’s short for ‘electronic mail.’
An acrynomn [sp], it has to have a big E & a dash, but then soon, email, itself, should be accepted due to common usage.
This was a joke, right?
I can’t think of any reason to capitalize the ‘e’; it abbreviates a non-capitalized word.
The hyphen is there because the term is electronic-mail, as opposed to just mail. But no one want to say or write electronic-mail all the time, so it is abbreviated to e-mail. I’ve seen reference in the past to a foreign (french?) word email[e], and that is why the preferred usage is to not drop the hyphen.
Sounds like a bunch of zombies marching within the white lines. Can’t buy the phonetics excuse. eemail? You mean like: eeliminate and eeclipse? So ‘email’ stands for electronic mail. Duh. Still doesn’t explain the need for that darn dash. Why do most spell ezine without the dash. If we were to adopt the ‘hyphen’ principle, then we should have mb-mail for mailbox mail, maybe T-broadcast for tv, R-broadcast for radio, etc. Our lives would be filled with dashes.
I’ve conducted an informal survey via email and so far everyone has agreed they’d like less typing and more time. Nor have any of these people offered a good excuse for the dash. Be a rebel! email someone today!
electronic mail makes just as much sense
the hyphen-thing is just a step in the evolvement of proper compound nouns
other languages aren’t so squamish about sticking words together into compounds
today i will not use any capital letters or periods
be independent make up your own rule the heck with spell checkers i hate word