Is it e-mail, email, E-mail, E-Mail, or what?

July 14, 2008 @ 4:25 pm — Filed under: Lester Smith

You may have noticed that we spell the common term for electronic mail two different ways on this Web site: email and E-Mail. That’s no accident. Rather, it’s based upon the fact that we are both a print publisher and an electronic publisher.

What difference does print or Web make?
In print publishing, Webster’s dictionary is widely considered the final authority for spelling, and it insists upon e-mail, with a hyphen. Consequently, all of our print products hyphenate the term, and we retain that hyphenation in those product titles on this site. Common capitalization rules account for the uppercase E and M in those product titles.

On the Web, however, the word is much more commonly spelled email, with no hyphen, especially in online searches. In order to optimize our site for search-engine traffic, then, we spell the word without a hyphen in every instance except product titles. Only when the word begins a sentence do we capitalize the E, again following common capitalization rules.

You might be interested to know that some dictionaries are less strict than Webster’s concerning this word. The American Heritage dictionary lists the term as “e-mail or email or E-mail,” reflecting the fluid nature of the term’s usage at present.

Which should I use in my own writing?
As with most other questions of writing mechanics, the answer depends in part upon your target reader. Certainly you are always safe using the hyphenated spelling. However, in online texts it may appear stilted, like always using “cannot” rather than “can’t.” We certainly won’t mind if you send us an “email.”

A Footnote for Fun
Language purists might argue that the disappearing hyphen invites confusion, that retaining the separated spelling of e-book, e-mail, and e-tail is a hedge against further e-words, especially in use online (which is itself sometimes hyphenated). As the UpWrite Press Webmaster, I’m confident that the e-quality of the e-scape will survive allowing hyphen choice on a case-by-case basis, so I’d vote e-yes to ignore this e-mote of a topic and spell email closed.

—Lester Smith