{"id":1476,"date":"2014-03-03T18:17:39","date_gmt":"2014-03-04T00:17:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/?p=1476"},"modified":"2021-05-13T16:31:47","modified_gmt":"2021-05-13T21:31:47","slug":"hyphen-help-us","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/effective-writing\/hyphen-help-us\/","title":{"rendered":"E-mail vs. Email: Hyphen Help Us"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Nobody writes \u201celectronic mail,\u201d but how do you write the abbreviation\u2014is it <em>e-mail<\/em> with a hyphen or its successor, <em\">email<\/em>? It is a small matter that has larger implications: how, why, and when do accepted words and terms change forms?<\/p>\n<p>It seems no less than a miracle that <em>all right<\/em> has survived this long, despite the perennial threat of <em>alright<\/em>. It\u2019s probably only a matter of time until <em>want to <\/em>becomes <em>wanna<\/em>, and <em>going to <\/em>becomes <em>gonna<\/em>. (Or worse: even \u201cI\u2019m gonna go\u201d is preferable to the trendily inarticulate \u201cI\u2019m-a go,\u201d which one now hears with dispiriting regularity.)<\/p>\n<h2>Email<\/h2>\n<p>It is doubtful that anyone under thirty writes \u201ce-mail.\u201d A modish blog site called <em>Mashable<\/em> declares <em>e-mail<\/em> an \u201cantiquated tech term.\u201d <em>Mashable<\/em> gloated when, in 2011, the <em>Associated Press Stylebook<\/em> started recommending <em>email<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>As you may have noticed, many blogs and periodicals, and even some books, already write \u201cemail.\u201d Others are holding out, including the <em>San Francisco Chronicle<\/em>, defiantly championing <em>e-mail<\/em> despite being just down the road from Silicon Valley.<\/p>\n<h2>E-Mail<\/h2>\n<p>The writer Roy Blount Jr. is a passionate crusader for <em>e-mail<\/em>. In his book <em>Alphabet Juice<\/em>, Blount states, \u201c<em>email<\/em> is an e-barbarism,\u201d pointing out that \u201cyou wouldn\u2019t write <em>Abomb<\/em> for <em>A-bomb<\/em>, or <em>opositive<\/em> for <em>O-positive<\/em>, or <em>Xray<\/em> [for <em>X-ray<\/em>].\u201d<\/p>\n<h3>Email or E-mail<\/h3>\n<p>The GrammarBook.com staff won\u2019t deny that we are in Blount\u2019s corner, but at the same time we bristle at being labeled \u201cantiquated.\u201d Those who care about good grammar are already dismissed as querulous fussbudgets by most of the young and the hip; who needs more of that noise?<\/p>\n<p>But bear in mind that the ascendant Millennial Generation is, to put it mildly, not noted for its language skills. Millennials are mystified by hyphens, and when they use them at all, they tend to use them incorrectly. (Many of them think a hyphen is a cute little long dash.) So in retrospect, it\u2019s likely that <em>e-mail<\/em> was in trouble from the start.<\/p>\n<p>There you have it. It\u2019s the dilemma of sticking with something that works just fine vs. learning to live with a slick new version, however inane, vulgar, and wrongheaded it may strike you.<\/p>\n<p>Readers, now it\u2019s your turn: send us an electronic mail and weigh in on all this.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Nobody writes \u201celectronic mail,\u201d but how do you write the abbreviation\u2014is it e-mail with a hyphen or its successor,<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,35],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1476","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-effective-writing","category-hyphens"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1476"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1476"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1476\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4849,"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1476\/revisions\/4849"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1476"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1476"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1476"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}