Tuesday, January 17, 2006

YesOrNo

So... Biz Stone has a social networking idea that I like: "create a way for people to loop in their friends when trying to make a major life decision. So you post a question and then email all your friends to visit the page and vote yes or no".

It's a good idea... but I have two comments.

First, "email" is spelled "e-mail"... and second, wouldn't this be better as a mobile phone-enabled application? My friends are not always near a computer, but they all have mobile phones... and I want fast feedback.

Hm...

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

That bothers you? I thought e-mail was the appropriate spelling. Prove me wrong. ;)

Tanya S. said...

Actually, "e-mail" is swiftly becoming the old-fashioned way of writing it. In English, new words are often hyphenated until they become common in the language. For example, it used to be "soft-ware" until it became a fully developed idea itself, and of course we now just write "software". In England, "email" is already fully accepted and considered the correct version, but the U.S. is a little slower and both are considered correct, though "e-mail" will undoubtedly go the way of "soft-ware".

Silus Grok said...

Soft-ware, to-day, and week-end are all fine and good... but we're talking about a word more akin to "x-ray", "t-shirt", "t-bone steak", "f-bomb", et cetera... where the hyphenated parts are a word and a letter, rather than two words. I can't think of any example where the hyphens have been dropped to any large degree in this latter, more appropriate example.

I stick by my snide remark.

: )