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I thought I'd stay out of this one, but was surprised that no one
brought up pronunciation--many (I say many, not all <g>) of the
hyphen-less examples result in words that either violate english
spelling/pronunciation or create words that we would naturally pronounce
differently than they're supposed to be pronounced. So the hyphen
provides a clue to how to pronunciate (maybe capping could too, but the
hyphen is definitive). If we didn't recognize these words or came
across them unexpectedly, how would we naturally try to prounounce them?
tshirt
csection
hbomb
scurve
xaxis (we'd want to pronounce this "zaxis")
gman (guh-man>)
oring (this one's close but I keep seeing (b)oring)
Yes, of course with a little thought we'd pick up on the meaning
(although scurve might take a little longer), but the hyphen clues us in
immediately. email doesn't violate english spelling/pronunciation rules
and looks like it should be pronounced just as it is, so it won't always
need the hyphen--once we get used to it. Which clearly we haven't yet!
(personally, I don't use the hyphen because it's an awkward keystroke,
but I like e-mail aesthetically)
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Sella Rush
sellar -at- apptechsys -dot- com
Applied Technical Systems, Inc. (ATS)
Bremerton, Washington USA
Developers of the CCM Database
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