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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.
