Date:  Tue, 8 Aug 1995 06:52:04 -0500

From:  jeffrey howard allen <jhallen[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]INDIANA.EDU>

Subject: Re: Counting those e-mails



I tend to use "e-mail" in an adjectival way by saying "e-mail messages"

but have often heard people say "e-mails" here at work.



JEFF

----------------------------------------

On Mon, 7 Aug 1995, Larry Horn wrote:



> ADS-ers may be interested in participating in, or at least hearing about, an

> ongoing collection of submissions to the New York Times on the topic:

>       Is "an E-mail" acceptable usage?

> --as in "I'll send you an E-mail".

> The context of the article on the topic in today's Times (p. D4) makes it

> clear that (i) they're not interested in capitalization or hyphenization as

> parameters of variation, and (ii) they really do want electronic mail users to

> contribute their intuitions on whether they would use 'e-mail' as a count

> noun, although that terminology appears to be too technical for the Times

> staffers. Myself, I feel a bit mixed, since my stomach turns at the

> prescriptivist bias on the part of some of the quoted respondents (or of the

> tone of the article, whose text begins "Hip lingo, or corruption of the

> mother tongue--as if the two options were mutually exhaustive). At the

> same time, I really don't use 'e-mail' as a count noun. Do y'all?

>

> Larry

>