Question

Topic: E-Marketing

Is It Email Or E-mail On The Web And Email

Posted by A-Lux on 1/6/2009 at 5:53 PM ET 125 Points
I wanted to know if anyone has any research on the use of the word "email" in emails and the web.

We are still defining our style guide and I keep running into this word.

On the web I am convinced that most people don't hyphenate. But what about on email?

AP style says it should be "e-mail."

What are your thoughts?

Thank you in advance,

Ani

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RESPONSES

  • Posted by Inbox_Interactive on 1/6/2009 at 6:09 PM Accepted
    Been there, done that -- and over four years ago!

    https://www.marketingprofs.com/ea/qst_question.asp?qstID=4399

    We use "email." My thinking is that "e with the dash" (e-mail) looks dated.

    However, depending on what you're doing, you might use both. For example I could see using both if you were an email marketing company and you're discussing SEO.

    What is interesting is that "e-mail" seems to have taken over in terms of Google. If you search the term both ways, "e-mail" generates about twice as much content as "email."

    It was not this way four years ago.

    I think the bottom line is that there's no right or wrong answer. Let us know what you decide!

    Paul
  • Posted by A-Lux on 1/6/2009 at 7:37 PM Author
    Thank you for your responses. I like the Press Release from the EEC.

    The email is going out to members of a non-profit organization.

    I just checked Wordtracker and "email" got more hits than "e-mail" on the web. My question was more on usage on actual emails.

    Thank you. I will close the question tomorrow morning in case I get more responses.

    Ani

  • Posted by michael on 1/6/2009 at 7:42 PM Member
    I use the-m interchange-ably.....and I ge-t the-m e-ithe-r way

    Michael
  • Posted by Mark on 1/7/2009 at 2:02 AM Accepted
    I think usage in emails (where SEO is of less importance) is largely a matter of taste and personal or organisational preferences.

    My understanding is e-mail is grammatically correct in terms of the "rules" of English and the origins of the word, which is why various media outlets still retain the hyphen.

    However, popular use has long veered to "email" and I choose to go with what people prefer in their day-to-day language.

    An exception is German, where "email" actually means something else (enamel I think) and the hyphen thus has a useful purpose in distinguishing between the two (not that enamel and email are easily confused!)
  • Posted on 1/7/2009 at 7:03 AM Accepted
    According to Prof. Donald E. Knuth (Stanford), a word about the use of hyphens:

    A note on email versus e-mail
    Newly coined nonce words of English are often spelled with a hyphen, but the hyphen disappears when the words become widely used. For example, people used to write ``non-zero' and ``soft-ware' instead of ``nonzero' and ``software'; the same trend has occurred for hundreds of other words. Thus it's high time for everybody to stop using the archaic spelling ``e-mail'. Think of how many keystrokes you will save in your lifetime if you stop now! The form ``email' has been well established in England for several years, so I am amazed to see Americans being overly conservative in this regard. (Of course, ``email' has been a familiar word in France, Germany, and the Netherlands much longer than in England --- but for an entirely different reason.)

    Marketing-Riot
  • Posted by Paul Kemper on 1/7/2009 at 9:24 AM Accepted
    Depends on the purpose you have.

    In Google, 5.2 billion hits for 'e-mail' and 2.9 billion of 'email'.

    I have an article on hiding your e-mail address (https://www.tauros.eu/default/hide-e-mail-address) for spammers. The click-thru's to this page almost all start their search with 'email' rather than 'e-mail'. For SEO it does not matter much, as you can see I use 'e-mail' on the page itself.
  • Posted by A-Lux on 1/7/2009 at 1:34 PM Author
    Thank you all for your responses. There's a battle ragging here in regards to the correct spelling of the word email.

    And Thank you Inbox_Interactive for sending the link to the same discussion from 4 years all. I went through the whole thing.

    I feel that they are both correct.

    I like the mention of looking for the dreaded hyphen key.

    It's email in my book. But I do think we have to be consistent across channels. So we have to use "email" in print, web and email.

    So verdict is: email.

    Thank you all. Ani

  • Posted by A-Lux on 1/7/2009 at 5:22 PM Author
    Thank you for your response. I saw the whole trail from 4 years ago when you had posted an answer. It's one of those things with no one correct answer.
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