How Does One Spell "Email"?

The issue of language usage and spelling came up at an office meeting not too long ago. “How do you spell ‘email’?” was the question. E Mail, E-Mail, e-mail or email. And for that matter, how do you spell online? On line, online or on-line.

Is website one word or two?

The answer is that there is no answer. Because there is no consensus. Because the words haven’t been around long enough to generate a consensus.

The beauty and elegance of the English language is that usage evolves over time by consensus. While the Modern Language Association (MLA) may dictate how an academic humanities paper should be put together, even it evolved between the time I bought my first MLA manual as a college freshman and the time I was in grad school. Standards changed, usage changed and even the stodgy MLA changed.

American English is perhaps the most democratic language in the world. It’s the product of writers and thinkers that decided that they would spell one thing this way and punctuate thus.

It’s the result of consensus.

A consensus that has evolved from Shakespeare to the Victorians to the Edwardians to the Modernists. And consensus develops only over time.

So we may not really know how to spell “email” for a while. For my part, “email”, “online” and “website” are each one word. If you separate them, they mean something different that if you take them together.

That’s my opinion, and I’m sticking to it.

And it’s my contribution to the great experiment of the consensual English language.