Checking My Email

The significance of the title is not the meaning of the word email. It's the lack of hyphen. Until recently, according to the editor's bible — or one of them, the AP Stylebook — email was e-mail. Then e-mail went the way of Web site, and things haven't been the same since.

The magazine I edit bases its style on AP's, and so I dutifully changed Web site to website when that alteration was announced last year. But I missed the memo on email. This morning's newspaper tells me why. The Washington Post has kept the hyphen, so I remained oblivious to the change.

Why do these things matter so much? The fine article in today's Post explains that, too, quoting David Minthorn, deputy standards editor of the Associated Press. "We're not a bunch of old fogies sitting around in our ivory tower. We're alive to changes and new ideas. We have a real sense that new words and changes in language reflect the culture and give us an inkling to where society is headed."

Think of editors as warriors, standing guard over a culture where standards don't matter, insisting — with their sharpened pencils — that they do.