RE: "Email" vs. "E-mail"

["Fred Ridder" <docudoc -at- hotmail -dot- com>]

David's mention of linguistic drift is not relevant in this
case because we're not talking about a compound word.

What we're dealing with is prepending a word with a
letter that is pronounced as a letter. As Bonnie notes
there are *numerous* precedents for retaining the
hyphen, even if some people may think it looks
"woefully anachronistic" in this specific case.

If you stop to think for a minute or two, you'll come
up with a dozen or more cases similar to the ones Bonnie
listed, but I'll bet that you'd have to think long and hard
to come up with any counter-examples where a
prepended letter is *not* separated with a hyphen.

Here are a few more common hyphenated examples
off the top of my head:
A-frame
g-string
F-hole
G-clef and C-clef
x-axis, y-axis, z-axis
C-note
T-bill
s-curve
Q-tip [admittedly unfair since it's a trademark...]

Plus the majority of other e-ified nouns in common
use (e.g. e-commerce, e-purchasing) are hyphenated,
so there's also an issue of consistency.

My opinions only; I don't speak for Intel
Fred Ridder
Intel
Parsippany, NJ