How to spell email (E-mail)?
scott.g...@gmail.com
o email, Email, e-mail, E-mail
o web site, website, web-site
o homepage, home page
Do we capitalize Internet? How about Web?
Adrian Bailey
news:1108516270.3...@z14g2000cwz.googlegroups.com...
Who's "we"? My preferences are e-mail (or email), website, homepage (or home
page), internet and Web.
Adrian
Gerald Smyth
scott.g...@gmail.com wrote:
> Can anyone tell me if we have figured out how to spell words like:
>
> o email, Email, e-mail, E-mail
> o web site, website, web-site
> o homepage, home page
I don't know about 'we', but e-mail or E-mail, website or web-site with
a preference for the former, and home page seem right to me. And(, to
spell it out,) email, Email, web site and homepage do not look right.
[snip]
...g
scott.g...@gmail.com
Everyone seems to have a preference. Is there an authoritative
reference?
John Hatpin
My own choices:
email
website
home page
internet
web
These terms have become so common that capitalisation looks archaic to
me, but "homepage" (without the space) still seems odd outside of a
technical discussion.
Very much a matter of preference.
--
John H
Yorkshire, England
Robert Lieblich
There are lots of authoritative references. They disagree on just
about everything.
--
Liebs
Skitt
I like e-mail, Web site, and home page.
Funny -- so does M-W Online.
--
Skitt (in Hayward, California)
www.geocities.com/opus731/
Adrian Bailey
news:37fs1bF...@individual.net...
> I like e-mail, Web site, and home page.
>
> Funny -- so does M-W Online.
Oh, you're so conventional, Skitt. :-)
Adrian
Skitt
> "Skitt" wrote:
>> I like e-mail, Web site, and home page.
>>
>> Funny -- so does M-W Online.
>
> Oh, you're so conventional, Skitt. :-)
Strange as it may seem, MWCD10 had "E-mail" for the noun. I never did. M-W
seem to have now copied my usage. :-)
Charles Riggs
wrote:
Christ, what an idiot you are. The words are email, web site, home
page, the Internet and, yes, the Web. At least you got one right.
--
Charles Riggs
There are no accented letters in my email address
lightbulb
http://www.answers.com/website&r=67
http://www.answers.com/homepage&r=67
These websites cite AHD4, but I have not double checked.
email
website
homepage
Internet
Web
Mike
Skitt
> <scott.g...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> Can anyone tell me if we have figured out how to spell words like:
>>
>> o email, Email, e-mail, E-mail
>> o web site, website, web-site
>> o homepage, home page
>>
>> Do we capitalize Internet? How about Web?
>
> http://www.answers.com/website&r=67
> http://www.answers.com/homepage&r=67
>
> These websites cite AHD4, but I have not double checked.
>
> email
> website
> homepage
> Internet
> Web
Here's the AHD4 usage note:
The transition from World Wide Web site to Web site to website seems to have
progressed as rapidly as the technology itself. The development of website
as a single uncapitalized word mirrors the development of other
technological expressions which have tended to evolve into unhyphenated
forms as they become more familiar. Thus email has recently been gaining
ground over the forms E-mail and e-mail, especially in texts that are more
technologically oriented. Similarly, there has been an increasing preference
for closed forms like homepage, online, and printout.
That says that those who are technologically involved with those things are
setting usage. I suppose it's their right.
Gerald Smyth
abomb or hbomb. The stresspattern of the word represented by w, e, b,
s, i, t, e calls in my view for 'web' and 'site' to be visually linked
by hyphenation or writing solid....g
Gerald Smyth
home page
...g
Stephen Oakes
<scott.g...@gmail.com> wrote...
Everyone else is wrong. It's:
eMail
web site
home page
the Internet
the WWWeb
--
Stephen Oakes
Stephen Oakes
"Stephen Oakes" <soa...@XXXbigpond.net.au> wrote...
and it's not "an email". You don't say "a mail", DO YOU!!??!?!?!?!
--
Stephen Oakes
CyberCypher
As usual, style manuals will have their say about what usage is
proper for the publications they apply to (or "to which they apply",
or even "they are applied to" or "to which they are applied").
As a daily reader of computer articles on the Web, I am most
influenced by them, but most of the people who send me email use "e-
mail" or "E-mail", "internet", and "web". Some even use two spaces
after a period (BrE "full stop").
If the form (whatever it is) communicates the writer's meaning, it
doesn't matter unless the writer is obliged to follow the dictates of
a style manual.
--
Franke: EFL teacher & medical editor
For email, replace numbers with English alphabet.
"The only problem with seeing too much is that
it makes you insane." Phaedrus
CyberCypher
>
> "Stephen Oakes" <soa...@XXXbigpond.net.au> wrote...
>> eMail
>
> and it's not "an email". You don't say "a mail", DO YOU!!??!?!?!?!
False analogy. *"A mail" = "a letter" or "a piece of mail", just as "a
water" = "a {glass/cup/bottle} of water".
An email is a hole nuther thang.
lightbulb
"Stephen Oakes" <soa...@XXXbigpond.net.au> wrote in message
news:Q%AQd.162927$K7.1...@news-server.bigpond.net.au...
>
> "Stephen Oakes" <soa...@XXXbigpond.net.au> wrote...
>
> and it's not "an email". You don't say "a mail", DO YOU!!??!?!?!?!
>
Of course not. When referring to email collectively, there is no "an"
required. When referring to a singular instance of email, "an" can be used.
"Mail" is not usually used in the same singular sense that "email" is.
I'm forwarding email to you.
Thanks for the kind email. (Could be singular or plural).
I'm forwarding an email to you.
Send me an email when you get home.
Send me mail when you get home.
Send me a letter...
Mike
Tony Cooper
If so, then limber up the right ring finger that strikes the "O" key,
and the right (or left) index finger that strikes the "Y" key, for I
shall continue to write "email", "website", "the internet", and "the
web". I shall send email to people and an email to a person.
I don't intend this because these are the "right" way to write them,
but because they are the forms that seem best to me.
Gerald Smyth
correspondence from a traditional letter by calling it 'an e-mail
message'. Now it's been shortened to 'an e-mail'. It already is 'an
e-mail'. The transformation is a fait accompli. It's no better or worse
than the shortening of 'packet-boat' to 'packet' as in 'a packet sailed
every month from Martinique', where 'packet', like 'e-mail', is a
noun-turned-adjective-turned-noun-of-a-different-sort....g
R J Valentine
Plus, they take less effort.
--
R. J. Valentine <mailto:r...@smart.net>
But not a one of them is properly Oy!able.
Stephen Oakes
"CyberCypher" <cyber...@19-16-25-13-01-03.com> wrote...
> False analogy. *"A mail" = "a letter" or "a piece of mail",
Exact analogy.
If anything, it should be "an eletter".
--
Stephen Oakes
Stephen Oakes
"Gerald Smyth" <gerald...@yahoo.com> wrote...
> No, you say 'a letter'. At first, we distinguished a piece of e-mail
> correspondence from a traditional letter by calling it 'an e-mail
> message'. Now it's been shortened to 'an e-mail'. It already is 'an
> e-mail'.
A good explanation. I still hate it.
> The transformation is a fait accompli.
Probably. :-(
FWIW, I still say "an email message" or just "email".
--
Stephen Oakes
Stephen Oakes
"Tony Cooper" <tony_co...@earthlink.net> wrote...
>>Everyone else is wrong. It's:
>>
>>web site
>>home page
>>the Internet
>>the WWWeb
>
> web". I shall send email to people and an email to a person.
I was being slightly facetious. (I mean "eMail", FFS?)
...except for "an email". Ugh.
--
Stephen Oakes
Robert Lieblich
But it isn't. Usage is as usage does. Analogy is worthless if the
result isn't what people say or write.
I think you're just funnin' us. But we wouldn't want the poor OP to
get confoozed.
--
Liebs
Mike Lyle
> Can anyone tell me if we have figured out how to spell words like:
>
> o email, Email, e-mail, E-mail
> o web site, website, web-site
> o homepage, home page
>
> Do we capitalize Internet? How about Web?
It may not help, here's my reasoning: I'm not urging you to accept
it, but at least it _is_ reasoning. "An internet" is an "intranet",
not generally available to the public: it would link two or more
private networks. "The Internet" is the public one we are using right
now: it takes a capital letter, because, unlike the other ones, it
can be thought to be like the unique name of a place, a railway, or
a book or newspaper.
Similarly, "Web" makes more sense than "web": there are many kinds of
web, but only one "wubbleyou". The proper-name logic also applies to
"Usenet" and even perhaps "FTP" (though "FTP" may take capitals just
because it's an initialism, as in "UHT milk": I'm unsure).
Messages are sent by "e-mail", not by "E-mail", because it's the name
of a process, not a unique entity. The "e" is an abbreviation, of
course; but I feel it's so closely bound to "mail" that it's natural
to treat it as part of the word. (And not all initialisms are in
capitals, anyhow.)
As for whether or not to close pairs up, it's still a matter of
taste. Over time, familiar pairs do usually merge into a single word,
and I'm sure "email", "homepage" and "website" will emerge as the
ordinary forms. Of the three, "homepage" is the only one I find
_really_ ugly: the others have already begun to seem quite shipshape.
Mike.
Joe Fineman
I agree, but it's a lost cause.
--
--- Joe Fineman jo...@verizon.net
||: The second mouse gets the cheese. :||
Joe Fineman
the World Wide Web is referred to), home page. As a copyeditor, I
find that most of my customers (technical publishers of various
stripes) still prefer Web site, but the newspapers seem to have gone
for website.
Casting about for precedents: In engineering, e-beam is well
established for electron beam, and I have never seen ebeam; so my
preference for email is anomalous. Home page, in my dialect at least,
has two primary stresses, like home run, which argues for two words.
Web site has only secondary stress on the second syllable, and it has
a specialized sense, which argues for one word; but I still haven't
gotten over the feeling that Web is short for WWW.
--
--- Joe Fineman jo...@verizon.net
||: When you have taken a wrong turn, a step backward is a step :||
||: in the right direction. :||
CyberCypher
> "Stephen Oakes" <soa...@XXXbigpond.net.au> writes:
>
>> "CyberCypher" <cyber...@19-16-25-13-01-03.com> wrote...
>>> False analogy. *"A mail" = "a letter" or "a piece of mail",
>>
>> Exact analogy.
>>
>> If anything, it should be "an eletter".
>
> I agree, but it's a lost cause.
It's been a lost cause since the very beginning of electronic mail,
when modems were things one had to insert the handset of the telephone
into for the transfer to occur. That's more than two decades already.
There's nothing like fighting a war that's been lost for decades. Good
for the soul, I suppose.
Charles Riggs
<tony_co...@earthlink.net> wrote:
>On Wed, 16 Feb 2005 05:37:50 GMT, "Stephen Oakes"
><soa...@XXXbigpond.net.au> wrote:
>>Everyone else is wrong. It's:
We have been seeing an usually high number of mistakes in this thread.
>>eMail
>>web site
>>home page
>>the Internet
>>the WWWeb
Was it 'eMail' at one time? I think I have seen it, but it'd be
unusual to see it spelled that way today. I'd have little argument
with the rest, in today's usage, except to say 'the Web' has
supplanted 'the WWWeb'.
>If so, then limber up the right ring finger that strikes the "O" key,
>and the right (or left) index finger that strikes the "Y" key, for I
What variety of gibberish is that, Coop?
>shall continue to write "email", "website", "the internet", and "the
>web". I shall send email to people and an email to a person.
If I saw 'the internet' in someone's post, and the poster had claimed
some knowledge of the Internet, I'd assume the person was
sub-literate, at best. Your 'the web' isn't sub-literate, it is
illiterate. There is no way you can defend it.
One sees both 'web site' and 'website', so I won't scold you for
picking the less attractive of the two. I agree with Mike Lyle that
the two words will eventually merge, so some premature merging is
probably acceptable.
>I don't intend this because these are the "right" way to write them,
>but because they are the forms that seem best to me.
Who could argue with that reasoning? Perhaps you're even dumber than
our man in South Africa, the country with the highest murder rate in
the world, incidentally: far higher than America's, even.
Bob Cunningham
<jo...@verizon.net> said:
> Home page, in my dialect at least, has two primary stresses,
Only one here: "HOME page".
> like home run, which argues for two words. Web site
> has only secondary stress on the second syllable,
> and it has a specialized sense, which argues for one
> word;
In my dialect there are lots of collocations that have a
specialized sense and secondary stress on the second word:
"school board", "water taxi", "pencil sharpener", "coffee
roll", "boy scout", "drill sergeant", "jock itch", "spelling
checker", "slide rule", "shift key", "group theory",
"monkey wrench", "end table", "pilot light", ... .
I prefer "Web site", but an argument against it could be
that a collocation "A B" gets secondary stress on the "B" if
the implication is that there are other "B"s that "A B" is
being distinguished from. Are there other "site"s that "Web
site" needs to be distinguished from?
In "not X site, but WEB site", what might "X" be?
Hmmm ... , come to find out, "damsite" is closed.
"Construction site" isn't in my big red dictionary, but I
doubt that anyone would write it closed.
"Cyberspace" is closed.
Two dictionaries show "Web site"; I haven't found "website"
in a dictionary yet.
_Webster's New World College Dictionary_ has "web-site".
Note lowercase "w" and hyphen.
My spelling checker wants me to change "website" to "web
site".
But Google gets "about 33,900,000" hits for "web site" and
"about 359,000,000" for "website".
I will continue to adamantly use "Web site" for the
duration.
Skitt
> Usage has not settled down. On my own, I make it email, Web site (if
> the World Wide Web is referred to), home page. As a copyeditor, I
> find that most of my customers (technical publishers of various
> stripes) still prefer Web site, but the newspapers seem to have gone
> for website.
I know that we have been here before, but "copy editor" as two words is the
prevalent form for the occupation, although there are a couple of
dictionaries the oppose the other ten or so by having it as a single word.
Almost all dictionaries agree that the verb is to "copyedit", though. There
are a couple of them that recognize a hyphenated form for it.
Of course, there's nothing wrong with saying "I edit copy", I believe.
Stephen Oakes
"CyberCypher" <cyber...@19-16-25-13-01-03.com> wrote...
>> I agree, but it's a lost cause.
>
> It's been a lost cause since the very beginning of electronic mail,
Really? I can't remember the term "an email" being used until the "general
populace" gained access to email. I would say that up to the past 5 years
or so, it was always referred to as "an email message" or perhaps "some
Oliver Cromm
> In "not X site, but WEB site", what might "X" be?
FTP, Gopher, WAP ...
Yes, most people aren't aware of it, but even "Gopher site" still gets
34,000 Google hits.
--
Oliver C.
45n31, 73w34
Temperatur: 1°C
Bob Cunningham
<ski...@comcast.net> said:
> Joe Fineman wrote:
[...]
> > As a copyeditor, I
> > find that most of my customers (technical publishers of various
> > stripes) still prefer Web site, but the newspapers seem to have gone
> > for website.
> I know that we have been here before, but "copy editor" as two words is the
> prevalent form for the occupation, although there are a couple of
> dictionaries the oppose the other ten or so by having it as a single word.
> Almost all dictionaries agree that the verb is to "copyedit", though. There
> are a couple of them that recognize a hyphenated form for it.
_Webster's New World College Dictionary_ is said to be* the
dictionary of first choice for the Associated Press, United
Press International, and many -- possibly most -- American
newspapers. It has "copy editor" and "copy-edit". (It has
"website" with "also web (or Web) site".)
* The Associated Press states its preference for _WNWCD_ in
the 2000 edition of its _Stylebook_. Strange to see, it
makes that statement within the entry "dictionaries":
For spelling, style and usage questions not covered in
this stylebook, consult Webster's New World College
Dictionary, Fourth Edition, published by IDG Books.
My print copy of _WNWCD_, _Fourth Edition_, was published in
2002 by Wiley Publishing, Inc.
Clark S. Cox III
> Can anyone tell me if we have figured out how to spell words like:
>
> o email, Email, e-mail, E-mail
> o web site, website, web-site
> o homepage, home page
>
> Do we capitalize Internet? How about Web?
There is also the distinction that some make between "an internet" and
"the Internet". An internet is an interconnected network that uses the
IP protocol, while the Internet is the particular internet through
which I am posting this message.
--
Clark S. Cox, III
clar...@gmail.com
CyberCypher
But never "an electronic letter" or "some e-letters".
Joe Fineman
> I know that we have been here before, but "copy editor" as two words
> is the prevalent form for the occupation, although there are a
> couple of dictionaries the oppose the other ten or so by having it
> as a single word.
I know. I charge 18 $/h to follow other people's rules.
--
--- Joe Fineman jo...@verizon.net
||: Illicitude enhances felicificity. :||
R H Draney
>
>"Skitt" <ski...@comcast.net> writes:
>
>> I know that we have been here before, but "copy editor" as two words
>> is the prevalent form for the occupation, although there are a
>> couple of dictionaries the oppose the other ten or so by having it
>> as a single word.
>
>I know. I charge 18 $/h to follow other people's rules.
What's the going rate for prostitution these days?...r
Roland Hutchinson
> "Skitt" <ski...@comcast.net> writes:
>
>> I know that we have been here before, but "copy editor" as two words
>> is the prevalent form for the occupation, although there are a
>> couple of dictionaries the oppose the other ten or so by having it
>> as a single word.
>
> I know. I charge 18 $/h to follow other people's rules.
How much to follow just the one rule about the dollar sign going before the
numerals?
--
Roland Hutchinson Will play viola da gamba for food.
NB mail to my.spamtrap [at] verizon.net is heavily filtered to
remove spam. If your message looks like spam I may not see it.
Evan Kirshenbaum
> Stephen Oakes wrote on 17 Feb 2005:
>
>>
>> "CyberCypher" <cyber...@19-16-25-13-01-03.com> wrote...
>>>> I agree, but it's a lost cause.
>>>
>>> It's been a lost cause since the very beginning of electronic
>>> mail,
>>
>> Really? I can't remember the term "an email" being used until the
>> "general populace" gained access to email. I would say that up to
>> the past 5 years or so, it was always referred to as "an email
>> message" or perhaps "some email".
>
> But never "an electronic letter" or "some e-letters".
The OED dates "letter", in this sense to "before 1225". "Message"
goes back to ca. 1325. Both predate "mail" (1654). These terms
survived several changes of medium and were the common terms when I
started using email, which was typically called "mail"[1] and which
the OED dates in that sense to 1970. We didn't see a need back then
to come up with new names for things that were essentially "the same
thing in a new medium". If you had to specify, you said "email
message". Most of the time "message" was just fine.
[1] The old-fashioned physical kind was "snail mail", "physical mail",
or "U.S. mail" if there was a need to distinguish.
--
Evan Kirshenbaum +------------------------------------
HP Laboratories |When you rewrite a compiler from
1501 Page Mill Road, 1U, MS 1141 |scratch, you sometimes fix things
Palo Alto, CA 94304 |you didn't know were broken.
| Larry Wall
kirsh...@hpl.hp.com
(650)857-7572