Proofreading Service - Pain in the English
Proofreading Service - Pain in the English

Your Pain Is Our Pleasure

24-Hour Proofreading Service—We proofread your Google Docs or Microsoft Word files. We hate grammatical errors with a passion. Learn More

Proofreading Service - Pain in the English
Proofreading Service - Pain in the English

Your Pain Is Our Pleasure

24-Hour Proofreading Service—We proofread your Google Docs or Microsoft Word files. We hate grammatical errors with a passion. Learn More

It’s Official: email not e-mail

The AP Stylebook today announced that electronic mail is now spelled without a hyphen: email. Finally. I personally haven’t used “e-mail” in about a decade. We have a thread here on this topic of how to properly spell email.

http://painintheenglish.com/case/4463

At the time, I commented that it may take another 10 years for this to settle, but it took less than a year!

Submit Your Comment

or fill in the name and email fields below:

Comments

owch

user115383 Sep-24-2023

0 vote   Permalink   Report Abuse

pain in my a

user115383 Sep-24-2023

0 vote   Permalink   Report Abuse

Depends if you want to go by Gregg Reference Manual or Chicago Manual of Style

For Titles-- Gregg: E-Mail Chacago: E-mail
Beginning of sentence-- E-mail

http://www.accu-assist.com/grammar-tips-archive/GrammarTip_capitalization-titles-headings-hyphenated-words.htm

Susan W Sep-26-2013

0 vote   Permalink   Report Abuse

I never take the AP style guide as the definitive reference. They will always lean on the side of less space taken up in column type. An anacronism in the Internet age. For example they have advocated against the serial comma for years when every other reference still calls for one. I will stick with:
e-mail
E-mail for sentence caps
E-Mail for title caps

Mike M May-01-2012

0 vote   Permalink   Report Abuse

I have always advocated against the hyphen in this case. I believe Winston Churchill would have too.

dogreed Sep-18-2011

2 votes   Permalink   Report Abuse

http://painintheenglish.com/case/4547/#comment-17489

I totally disagree. I'm gonna miss the hyphen. The hyphen is wide open space: rest your eyes, take your time, figure it out. Sure it takes more brain bits to process five characters than four, but we've now created a row of letters that are ugly when viewed close together (to the glancing eye, it might read 'snail') to create a word that forces one letter to carry a syllable alone.
("We're gonna have another 'awhile' on our hands!").

Mooderator Sep-18-2011

0 vote   Permalink   Report Abuse

I just received this in an e(-)mail. This matter is now surely resolved once and for all:

Your email has been received and a member of our Team will review it and reply accordingly. If you have any questions about your email please reply to this e-mail, as any additional comments will be added and keep a clear audit log. Please don’t send a completely new e-mail or you will create a new job...

Chris B Jun-03-2011

1 vote   Permalink   Report Abuse

In formal writing, and especially resumes, I always hyphenate e-mail. It looks better to me.

bubbha Mar-30-2011

0 vote   Permalink   Report Abuse

I write "any time" as two separate words, but maybe that's just me.
I hope we never go down the German route of mashingwordstogetherlikethis, but you did say "sensible", which imo excludes that :)

Chris B Mar-28-2011

0 vote   Permalink   Report Abuse

I think anytime (not any-time) a culture can eliminate a hyphen and create a sensible compound word, the language moves forward.

The swiftness of the change probably stems from the consensus rejection of "e mail" and which then led to folks finding the addition of a "-" tedious (except as an emoticon!).

Jackbox Mar-28-2011

3 votes   Permalink   Report Abuse

Do you have a question? Submit your question here