RE: E-Commerce?

[KMcLauchlan -at- chrysalis-its -dot- com]

Jean Ostrem said, to somebody else:

> > >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.
 
 
> I remember the last time this was posted. Was no one else bothered by 
> this? To me xray is perfectly acceptable, and I've seen it all over 
> the place.

I'm not. To me it's not. 
To me, the hyphen after the initial letter is the signal 
to pronounce that letter as it is named, and not as it 
is normally pronounced when included in a word.

Seeing "xray", I'm tempted to speak it as kzsray, or some such.
If I met it in a science fiction or fantasy novel, that would 
likely be my *first* interpretation.    No, really...  ;->

Pronounce xylophone...       um, ah... "ex-why-lop-hown"  :-)

I'm fairly sure there's not a rule that we HAVE to condone 
sloppiness, just because the lowest-common-denominator of 
readers/writers happens to wallow in it.

If there IS one, then it was probably made up by somebody I 
don't respect, anyway.

/kevin