Email vs. E-mail at Wired

[Gareth Branwyn]

That is NOT Wired, that is Wired News, a completely separate entity. It's an
entity I usually respect, but that is one of the lamest, most dishonest
pieces I have read on their site. They completely misrepresent Wired Style
and Wired magazine's decision to close up the word "email." The article
claims that it was a lazy practice of engineers that others (including Wired
Style) picked up. This is clearly ridiculous. The word was always hyphenated
by said computer professionals (and often capitalized, too). It was magazine
editors and Web writers who eventually began to drop the hyphen (at least as
far as I'm aware) and Wired Style decided to support this practice.

In the first edition of Wired Style it was made clear that this was a
conscious style choice given that, over time, many such words are closed up
after they reach a certain degree of familiarity and usage (e.g. handheld,
homepage, online, barcode). As a consultant to both editions of Wired Style,
this was a convention I wholeheartedly supported. No, I didn't agree with
everything in these books, but this was something I supported (and still
do).

So Wired News claims they're putting the hyphen back to make some sort of
bold statement about the plight of the English language at the hands of the
digital revolution, calling it a "striking blow for the majesty of the
English language." In the words of Lou Reed: "You're so vicious...you hit me
with a flower..."

> From: Grant Barrett <gbarrett at monickels.com>
> Reply-To: Grant Barrett <gbarrett at monickels.com>
> Date: Mon, 23 Oct 2000 21:29:12 +0200
> To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
> Subject: Email vs. E-mail at Wired
>
> Wired has decided to go with the hyphenated "e-mail", for what it's worth.
> Other style issues are described as well.
>
> http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,39450,00.html
>
> For a strong dose of ill-informed opinions and juvenile behavior concerning
> the issue tempered with the odd interesting comment and actual fact, see
> Slashdot:
>
> http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/10/23/1255205&mode=flat
>