Which is 'correct': email or e-mail?

[lovingboth]

[Poll #278050]

Comments

[misspotsitt.livejournal.com]

My answer is a total guess.

[purplerabbits.livejournal.com]

I think we're in the process of moving from e-mail to email as people get more used to it, so either is correct atm.

[ciphergoth.livejournal.com]

I don't think "e-mail" is wrong, I just prefer "email"...

[lovingboth]

Yeah, I think this is an example of something that started life with a hyphen but which is rapidly losing it.

[yesthattom.livejournal.com]

Linguists tell me that new words are often hyphenated, but lose the hyphen once they become common words. Therefore, since email is common to me, I remove the hyphen.

[drdoug.livejournal.com]

Same here, but both are in wide use so I'd count either as correct, and I'm fairly erratic in my own usage. I like Don Knuth's take (http://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/email.html) (at bottom of page) on the issue (the hyphen is indicative of the newness of the concept and will fade with time), but don't have the discipline to enforce it on myself ...

[valkyriekaren.livejournal.com]

yes. Though I object to random capitalisation (E-mail, e-Mail), which just looks blocky and ugly.

At work people talk about 'lotusing' thungs, because we use Lotus Mail. Horrible.

[scopo.livejournal.com]

Seconded (or thirded): hyphenated terms tend to close up over time. As a purist, I'd prefer 'e-mail' but as it is coming more and more common parlance, 'email' is acceptable.