Saturday, April 23, 2005

ur kidding lol

The normally astute Wall Street Journal has decided that email is a word. A tear is running down my cheek, much like the one on the proud Indian's face in that anti-littering commercial from the early '70s.

22 comments:

Bill said...

Now, now. Calling me a homo is not going to solve anything.

Niko said...

I'm sorry, but where in the Style and Substance newsletter is there a credible defense for them to do this, other than "saving the hyphens for compound modifiers"? Ugh.

Bill said...

Good point, Niko. I noticed the same thing. Do I smell an edict imposed from above?

In Russet Shadows said...

And why do liberals insist on throwing in their political commentary everywhere that it doesn't belong? I could speculate, but I'll be nice today.

The WSJ is actually lagging on this trend. It's quite an Anglo-Saxon phenomenon -- compounded words that is. We do use "library" now instead of the OE "bookhoard" but the fundamental nature of the langauge and the drive to collapse words to their most basic unit of expression lives on.

Bill said...

True enough, Russet, but that doesn't apply here. Never, ever has a single-letter-based abbreviation become a solid word. A-frame, B movie, C-rations, and so on, and so on.

Bill said...

There's a first time for everything, a wise author of cliches once said, and I don't doubt that someday this ignorant and lazy usage will be standard. But, if you'll forgive the strained genetics analogy, this is the last place I expected the first significant mutation to occur.

Bill said...

dum peeple don type abomb evyday in new fast way t talk rotflmao

Bill said...

"ty"

Niko said...

I said before I found no credible reasoning in the newsletter for the change.

Something else worth noting: The change applies only to "email," and the newsletter takes careful precaution to note that "e-commerce" and the like will retain the hyphen.

Making a word an exception to a guideline that otherwise fulfills the needs of an entire family of words just like it is a perfect excuse not to do it.

There are, on the other hand, a zillion words that look and work just like the word "email," including "emit," "emote," "emerge," and the like. Aside from preservation of the origin for the origin's sake, there's no reason why "email" isn't a perfectly lovely word, easily understood and pronounced.

Herein lies the problem. Those words did not originate from a conflagration of a first-letter-hyphenate and a word it modifies. Aside from every other argument given, consider the same sentence with the two different spellings of "e-mail:"

"I sent him an e-mail yesterday with the presentation's outline."
"I sent him an email yesterday with the presentation's outline."

The second sentence makes me stop at "email," because I read it "ehm-mail" or "uhmail" and have to take time to realize what they're going for is "e-mail." Why make readers work harder than they have to?

Dr. Zoom said...

Two questions for Linda:

1) If we're going to compare 'email" to "emit," emote" and "emerge," are we going to stress the second syllable in the first word as we do the last three? Just curious.

2) Is "e-mail" THAT much more common a word than "T-shirt"?

noneemac said...

Linda, it's "Internet," not "internet."

Bill said...

Let's all be nice and remember the real purpose of this forum, which of course is for Stephen Jones to point out what an idiot I am for sometimes straying from mainline descriptivism.

LizzieDaisy said...

I followed a link from my blog back to yours because there was a virtual stampede going on — two visits in five days. I thought it might be fun to backtrack and see what was up.

Can I say this? You all scare me. I'd put a smiley after that but I don't want to get my head bitten off. It's bad enough that I use contractions, incomplete sentances, ellipsis (just for fun and in the wrong places), and my grammar and spelling are attrocious, atrosious, hm, very bad. I can use the English language correctly if I necessary... I have proof readers.

email, e-mail
tshirt, t-shirt
xray, x-ray

WHY does it matter? I mean really. Yes, I read the whole post. Technically, I understand the difference, but gee, can you give me a really GOOD reason to care? Life or death of someone, somewhere? That said, I'm adding my own thoughts, always do.

Email is word we see every day and I don't know about the rest of you, but I don't personally have to sound it out. Same with tshirt. Virtually noone uses the hyphen, whether it is technically correct or not. When I see a hyphen in those words and others, I often think it makes the word look strange. I suppose it might be because I'm not an English major, or maybe it's because I'm just an ignorant, lazy American, but either way it seems to me that some people are just afraid of the evolution of it all.

Boy, I'll bet that just drove you all nuts. Who wants to correct it?

Have a great day all! Liz

(oh, what the heck) :)

Bill said...

Hi, Liz. You're right that all this is far from a life-or-death matter, but ... do you go to kitchen-design sites and ask the people posting there why on earth they care whether the damn backsplash is tile, stainless steel or dried dog shit, as long as it works? For better or worse, this is What We Do.

Ace said...

I vote for "e-mail" on the grounds of consistency. If they're going to do "e-commerce" and so forth, as a copy editor (though probably one without either the vast experience or fervor of many here), that lack of parallelism bugs the snot out of me.

Just discovered the blog, by the way, and it's excellent! Very funny, and yet professionally interesting.

Aside, frankly, as a part-time screenwriter and not-so-snazzy dresser, I think I probably use "B-movie" (which I tend to hyphenate) and "T-shirt" about as often as I use "e-mail" in my own, um, e-mail.

Kristina said...

From what I can tell, the difference between "email" and, say, "tshirt" or "vchip," is that "email" looks pronounceable, while "tshirt" and "vchip" look like Cyborgian gibberish.

I happen to think that "vchip" and "tshirt" are more likely to receive correct pronunciations as opposed to "email." When I see "vc" I think to pronounce the letter V because what words make a "vc" sound? I would not think to pronounce "emulate" as "ee-myoo-layt."

Then again, I'm just a kid.

Niko said...

Irregardless has to be accepted as a word. Whether it should be accepted in polite company or be obliged to wait outside the tradesman's entrance is another matter.

I don't mean to get off-track here, but can you explain that one to me? It's a double negative contained in one word.

Bill said...

"Irregardless" is a word, of course, but to give it any shred of acceptance is ridiculous. I don't even buy the standard criticism that it means the opposite of what it's trying to say, the way "I could care less" does. It's worse than that. To me, "not regardless" doesn't translate to "regardful" or "regarding" or anything else that makes any sense.

Dave Strauss said...

OK, so I'm coming to this a little late (or maybe it's a little early). "Email" is the correct spelling because "email" is something which was invented and named by geeks. Just because grammarians started using "e-mail" doesn't change the original spelling and usage.

Bill said...

Inventors don't necessarily get to choose the spelling and punctuation of a non-trademarked word. And geeks can't un-invent the letter "e."

Dave Strauss said...

OB Jargon-file reference: http://www.catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/E/email.html

English Richard said...

Hey guys, use your heads, or more exactly your neurons. In our heads, when we think about an electronic message we "hear" and say "e mail" not "electronic mail". We should think of the problematic "email" as a "sign" not a word. I'm sure you have no problem thinking of and saying “USA”. You do not insist on always saying United States of America, and you certainly do not "pronounce" the letters "usa".
OK, so e-mail has become email, and even though it's not a real word and not an abbreviation, why not accept it as a sign and say it as such? For example, in the UK people say "Pound" for the sign £, and you folks say "dollar" for the sign $.
On this keyboard I do not have the simple and basic Chinese sign for "man", it's like an inverted Y, but when I see this Chinese sign I think "man".
Long live the sign "email" !