Re: email

Subject: Re: email
From: Karen Kay <karen -at- WORDWRITE -dot- COM>
Date: Mon, 11 May 1998 09:12:16 -0700

Richard Mateosian said:
> >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

Huh. When you date this this 'original spelling' from? I've been
seeing e-mail since 1980; I think of email as a neologism. (It grates.)

Btw, the scenario the person you quoted described is the one that
linguists describe as the usual one for words, that they go in the
direction of not having hyphens.

Karen
karen -at- wordwrite -dot- com




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