Tuesday, 19 February 2008
I don't want e-mail anymore
SPOGG is reporting on the associated press' standpoint on the hyphen in 'e-mail'.
David Minthorn, spokesman for the AP stylebook has the following to say on the matter:
Call us stubborn, or sticklers for clarity, but AP sees no compelling reason to replace e-mail with email.
Why do we stand on e-mail? That spelling is the first choice of major dictionaries, including AP's primary spelling reference, Webster's New World College Dictionary Fourth Edition. It is also the preference of many newspapers. And e-mail is consistent with other hyphenated, electronic age terms such as e-book, e-commerce, e-shopping and e-business (which would look odd without hyphens).
You're not the first to propose dropping the hyphen. But the arguments of one fewer keystroke and search engine statistics don't convince us that e-mail would be enhanced by excision.
I disagree. I think 'email' does and should take preference over its hyphenated alter ego. What does the hyphen add? 'Email' looks better, reads better and is less cluttered.
One must regard the hyphen as a blemish to be avoided wherever possible. My feeling is that you may run [words] together or leave them apart, except when Nature revolts.
Quite right, Winston.
We've covered this before of course, when the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary dropped a gazillion hyphens from its new edition last October. I don't think I can be persuaded that a hyphen is needed in this case.
What do you lot think?
Labels: churchill, hyphen, OED, punctuation
posted by Gez at 6:53 pm
9 Comments
Friday, 14 December 2007
That's a sweet ass-hyphen
Because it's Friday, here is a cartoon for your delight and delectation:
posted by Gez at 12:35 pm
3 Comments
Wednesday, 3 October 2007
Can you lose your hyphen when playing leap-frog?
According to the BBC, last month the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary announced that its sixth edition will remove hyphens from no fewer than 16,000 words.
Some of these, such as leap-frog, will become one word while others will just lose the hyphen; walking-stick for example, will be changed to walking stick.
"But how will we differentiate between a stick designed to aid mobility and a magical stick that can walk?", I hear you cry. The answer is a mixture of context and old fashioned common sense (formerly known as old-fashioned common-sense). If there is genuine ambiguity as to whether the prefix is a verbal noun or a participle adjective then the hyphen must remain; otherwise I find them wholly unnecessary. I would never assume that a pot belly is the belly of an earthenware vessel (unless the context suggested so) so why would I need a hyphen?
The article, however, suggests that technology is the reason the hyphen is becoming unfashionable.
The blame, as is so often the case, has been put at least in part on electronic communication. In our time-poor lifestyles, dominated by the dashed-off [or should that be dashed off or dashedoff] e-mail, we no longer have time to reach over to the hyphen key.Balderdash, I say. Especially as the decrease in hyphen use has coincided with an increase in the use of the dash — an entirely different piece of punctuation but the same button on your keyboard. I have discussed my reasons for liking the dash in a previous post.
But hang on a minute. I don't think I'm quite ready to pen the hyphen's obituary as when I look at the above quote it's my view that "dashed-off" benefits from the hyphen. It just reads better — more smoothly somehow. The hyphen in e-mail, however, doesn't serve any purpose at all and I'm always cursing the Beeb's dogged refusal to join in with the rest of the world and drop it.
I don't know, I guess we're just going to have to play it by ear and be forgiving when it comes to other people's use of this messy, cluttering, largely redundant little character.
Labels: BBC, hyphen, punctuation
posted by Gez at 4:58 pm
8 Comments
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