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>>In my book of proper grammar & word usage, it's E-mail
>What book? Why capitalize? What is the hyphen for?
The copyediting list aired this matter thoroughly within the last month or
so. I strongly prefer "email," but here are all the arguments I can remember
for E-mail or e-mail:
1. Readers won't pronounce the "e" long with this spelling.
2. We hyphenate other similar words: A-bomb, C-note, X-ray. Nobody could
think of a counterexample (except email), although some people
write xray.
3. Someone might confuse it with a 15th century French enamel.
4. It's (supposedly) an abbreviation for "electronic mail," and there's
a rule somewhere that dictates hyphenating or capitalizing such things.
That's the whole case, as I remember it. ...RM
Richard Mateosian Technical Writer in Berkeley CA srm -at- c2 -dot- org
