Re: FW: Email versus e-mail

Subject: Re: FW: Email versus e-mail
From: "David Loveless" <daveloveless -at- gmail -dot- com>
To: techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
Date: Mon, 17 Jul 2006 13:19:02 -0600

Bryan mentioned...

"My personal rule is to hyphenate all e-words unless they are a
company or product name. My rationale is that I can't think of any
hyphenated word that has morphed to no hyphen. For example, O-Ring,
X-Ray...."

Actually, the linguistic trend is eventually to *always* remove the
hyphen from a word. Hyphenation, like acronyms, tend to simplify over
the years. The example that comes immediately to mind is the word
coworker. It was originally hyphenated and some style guides (AP I
believe) still insist that it be hyphenated, but virtually every major
dictionary says no. We are seeing the same thing happening right now
with e-mail and other commonly hyphenated words.

As for me, I choose to hyphenate any time that there is any doubt at
all no matter what the style guides or dictionaries say. I think it
removes the possible confusion over pronunciation. I also tend to
hyphenate all "e-" words for that same reason. Same with our "i-"
words. It's funny now, but my first introduction to itunes came about
with disastrous social consequences. But that's just me and my
linguistic side overriding the more responsible and anal-retentive
editing side.

And as a side note, Chicago 15 does mandate the hyphen for all "e-"
terms (7.90 Compounds Formed with Specific Terms).

Long Live Descriptivism!!!

Dave
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Follow-Ups:

References:
FW: Email versus e-mail: From: Diana Ost

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