o2b.net : Tim Murtaugh

The answer is email. Allow me to elucidate.

All of us read. I can say that because if you can’t read, then you aren’t reading this, and you aren’t among the ‘us’ I refer to. Most of us have read a number of books, including some that were written in the not-so-recent past. And I’m sure most of us have noticed that in old books, the syntax and spelling of words in can be different than those we are accustomed to. The degree of differentiation varies based upon the culture and times of the author of the book in question. What does this tell us? Language evolves, it grows, it mutates. E-mail may have been correct at one time, but it is no longer.

Why do I care? I am a web developer by trade. Very often in the completion of a web project, changes are made to the final product. This may entail someone else going in to the pages and editing copy. If more than one person is doing this, and if no strict style guide is in existence to refer to, the copy editors must use their own judgement, which is often dissimilar from their colleague’s. ‘Email’, then, can be seen to be spelled a number of ways on the same site, which often I must correct once the client tells me how they want it spelled.

Argument One: Convenience

‘Email’ is a relatively new word. When coined, a word or phrase needs to make its meaning obvious, so as to be understood by those not familiar with it. As it comes into general usage the word or phrase commonly becomes smaller, allowing it to be more freely spoken and written. Example: Television. I don’t watch ‘television’ anymore. I watch TV.

Argument Two: Minimization of Verbiage

‘E-mail’ was originally an acronym representing ‘Electronic Mail’. While the definition has not changed, the usage has. ‘E-Mail’ was originally used by a limited number of academicians and military personel. Today, ‘email’ is received and sent by millions of people around the world. Examples: Moving pictures, picture shows. These terms eventually condensed into ‘movies’ and ‘pictures’. Evolution has since eliminated ‘pictures’ from common speech.

Argument Three: Hyphenation

They are many modern words whose forbears began as a hyphenated word. I have no evidence to point to, but I think that such words were originally two whole words used together so often that they became accepted as a single word. Lack of written history in medieval times may have led to the creation of new words. Examples: To-day, news-paper. Evolution apparently does not prefer hyphens.

Argument Four: The Pace of Progress

‘E-mail’ entered mainstream conciousness around 1990. Universities were offering E-mail addresses to students, and the general public was becoming aware of the existence of the Internet (with a capital ‘I’, which I also think is an anachronism). In a few years the World Wide Web came to be and the ‘E’ world was now mainstream. Mainstream acceptance means that one or more forces of evolution will come to bear.

E-mail, became ‘Email’, now becomes ‘email’.

The sooner we all agree, the sooner I can stop going back and fixing inconsistencies.

Updates:

Thank you to all who’ve replied to me, I’m glad I’m not alone in my insanity.

A small bit of trivia: A Google search for “e-mail” results in approximately 723 million results, while a search for “email” yields about 921 million results. (These results are from May ‘05, and are significantly different than my original, April ‘02, results — e-mail: 7.6M, email: 110M)

A reader reminded me of the existence of “eMail”. Having thought about it for a minute, I suspect that this is a little-used variant that was spawned in the frenzy of making everything “E” — eBay, eCommerce, eDonuts, etcetera. I say let this one die as well.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 3rd, 2002 at 10:21 pm and is filed under Essays, Email, Copywriting. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.