Univerza v Ljubljani

Filozofska fakulteta

Oddelek za anglistiko in amerikanistiko

Introduction to Corpus Linguistics

Seminar Paper

Tendencies in the American English spelling of the

words e-book/ebook and e-mail/email

Zarja Stare

Ljubljana, August 2015

Table of ContentsIntroduction.................................................................................................................................................2

Theoretical background................................................................................................................................3

Corpus research and analysis.......................................................................................................................4

E-book vs. Ebook......................................................................................................................................5

E-mail vs. Email.........................................................................................................................................7

Conclusion....................................................................................................................................................8

Bibliography.................................................................................................................................................9

Introduction

E-book and e-mail are two words I encounter on the internet or in other written texts on a daily

basis, yet they always seem to be spelled differently1. Sometimes it’s e-book/e-mail, sometimes

1 For the purposes of clarity and consistency I will use the hyphenated version of both terms for the duration of this

seminar paper when referring to them in general.

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ebook/email, other times even eBook.2 In this seminar paper I wanted to find out why that is

and see what the spelling tendency in written texts and on the internet is and if it has changed

throughout the years. To do this I consulted the Corpus of Contemporary American English

(COCA) and the Corpus of Global Web-Based English (GloWbE), which are both large enough

and recent enough to provide the information needed for this paper. Since COCA is based on

American English and because the British National Corpus does not contain either spelling

variant of the word e-book3, I chose to limit my research to the American dialect.

In this paper I hope to show what the main trends are in spelling both of these words in edited

and published texts throughout the years and in general, as well as see how these results

compare with the use of the two words in everyday American English used on the internet.

Theoretical background

E-book and e-mail are compound nouns consisting of the words electronic and book/mail.

According to the Merriam-Webster’s online dictionary both terms were first used in their

hyphenated form; the term e-book was first used in 1988, while the term e-mail was first used

in 1982 (Merriam-Webster). British etymologist and writer Michael Quinion says that as the word

e-mail “gained wider currency from the early nineties onwards, many newer users were

2 Since it is not possible to perform a case-sensitive search of the selected corpora, I cannot take into account the

spelling variant eBook or any other variant with capitalized letters and will therefore only differentiate between the

hyphenated and unhyphenated versions.3 Undoubtedly due to the fact that it only contains data up to 1993.

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uncertain whether the initial letter was an abbreviation or a prefix, and whether the word

should be written with a hyphen or not” (World Wide Words), which is what he thinks was the

reason for the appearance of the alternative forms of the word. This could explain why we are

able to encounter numerous spelling variants of both words in different texts. Another

explanation provided by the Chicago Manual of Style says that “with frequent use, open or

hyphenated compounds tend to become closed (on line to on-line to online),” (The Chicago

Manual of Style, 2010: 986). Due to the ever increasing importance of electronic sources in

modern society, the use of both e-mail and e-book along with other ‘e-’ compounds is on the

rise and we can therefore assume that both words will eventually follow the same path as on

line.

Before carrying out a corpus research of the different versions of the words e-book and e-mail, I

wanted to first look at some of the relevant stylebooks and see which versions of the words

were prevalent in each of them. I chose The AP Stylebook, The Chicago Manual of Style and The

Microsoft Manual of Style, all of which have been fairly recently updated, are based on

American English and are respected publications in different types of disciplines. I observed that

in the 2015 edition of The AP Stylebook the term e-mail is written without the hyphen, whereas

the term e-book is written in its hyphenated form. Upon further study, I discovered that up until

and including 2010 The AP Stylebook used the term e-mail, but in 2011 changed it to email, the

reason being that “language evolves” (Mashable). However, e-book remained hyphenated. In

the 16th edition of The Chicago Manual of Style, which came out in 2010 and is the most recent,

both e-mail and e-book are hyphenated. The manual states that compounds which are formed

with the prefix 'e-' must be hyphenated, except with proper nouns, such as for example eBay. In

the 4th and most recent edition of The Microsoft Manual of Style, which was released in 2012,

the term e-mail is not hyphenated, while the term e-book is written with the hyphen. In the

introduction to the manual I found that the 3rd edition, released in 2004, still maintained the

hyphen in e-mail. The Microsoft Corporation states that the reason for the loss of the hyphen is

that “the ubiquity of these terms in our daily lives has accelerated the adoption of the more

streamlined email” (The Microsoft Manual of Style, 2012: xix). Reviewing the information

presented here it is evident that two of the publications (The AP Stylebook and The Microsoft

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Manual of Style) changed the entry for e-mail from the hyphenated version to the

unhyphenated one. Both of these changes occurred after 2010 (one in 2011 and the other in

2012). The third publication (The Chicago Manual of Style) kept the hyphenated version

throughout all of the editions in which it appeared, but since the most recent edition of the

manual was published in 2010, we could assume that in the next edition e-mail might lose the

hyphen, which is what seems to be the trend. In contrast, the spelling of the word e-book has

not changed in any of the stylebooks and has remained hyphenated throughout all of the

editions.

Corpus research and analysis

In the practical part of my seminar paper, I wanted to explore what the tendency in spelling e-

mail and e-book is in practice in American English and if it has changed throughout the years, as

it has in the majority of the stylebooks I consulted. To accomplish this I referred to the Corpus of

Contemporary American English (COCA), which is composed of more than 450 million words of

text from 1990-2012 and covers five different genres (spoken, fiction, popular magazines,

newspaper and academic texts). I was also interested in seeing what the tendency in spelling is

for web-based American English and how it compared to the COCA. For this I consulted the

Corpus of Global Web-Based English (GloWbE), composed of 1.9 billion words from 1.8 million

web pages in 20 different English-speaking countries. However, because GloWbE does not offer

searches based on different time periods, I was only able to see what the tendency in spelling is

overall.

E-book vs. Ebook

Searching the Corpus of Contemporary American English I found that the term e-book, when

hyphenated, appears 459 times altogether or 0.99 times per million words. The term emerges

most frequently in the 2010-2012 period (4.99 per mil), followed by the 2000-2004 (1.12 per

mil), 2005-2009 (0.81 per mil), 1995-1999 (0.02 per mil) and 1990-1994 (0.00 per mil) periods.

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Figure 1: The frequency of the word e-book from 1990-2012 (COCA)

Looking up the unhyphenated term ebook, I found that it occurs considerably less frequently in

the corpus than its hyphenated equivalent; only 78 times overall or 0.17 times per million

words. The highest occurrence of the word is in the 2010-2012 period (0.42 per mil), followed

by the 2000-2004 (0.33 per mil), 2005-2009 (0.16 per mil), 1990-1994 (0.04 per mil) and 1995-

1999 (0.02 per mil) periods.

Figure 2: The frequency of the word ebook from 1990-2012 (COCA)

What I am able to conclude on the basis of these results is that the hyphenated version e-book

is much more widely used than the unhyphenated one in all time periods, except in the 1995-

1999 period, where the number of occurrences is the same for both spellings of the word, and

in the 1990-1994 period, where the unhyphenated version is used more than the hyphenated

one. At first glance this may appear strange, since as we know from the stylebooks consulted

the recommended spelling has always been with the hyphen. However, if we look more closely

we can see that the occurrence of both spelling variants in these two time periods is very low or

even non-existent and that the difference between the use of one variant and the other is

minimal to say the least and therefore barely relevant. Even so, if we analyze how and by whom

the unhyphenated version was used in these two time periods, we can observe that in the 1990-

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1994 period it was used exclusively by a magazine called Compute, based on which we can

assume that it is the spelling they opted for when referring to electronic books. In the 1995-

1999 period we can see that both occurrences of the word are in collocation with the word

Rocket. That is because Rocket eBook was the name of one of the first e-readers and it would

therefore be incorrect to use the hyphenated version when referring to it.

When searching the Corpus of Global Web-Based English for American English I found that the

hyphenated term e-book appears 1963 times overall or 5.07 times per million words, while the

unhyphenated term ebook appears 3519 times overall or 9.10 times per million words. This

means that the spelling ebook is almost twice as popular in web-based American English as its

hyphenated version. This is especially interesting when compared to the results obtained in the

COCA searches, where the hyphenated spelling variant is almost six times as frequent overall as

the unhyphenated one. I can only speculate as to why there is such a difference between the

use of the hyphenated and unhyphenated versions on the web and in published and edited

sources. Since GloWbe contains information from informal sites such as blogs, we could assume

that a lot of people just find it easier to spell ebook without the hyphen. It is also true that a lot

of sites specializing in e-books, spell the word without the hyphen, such as eBooks.com,

ebookstore.sony.com, Barnes and Nobles call them ebooks and even Amazon, arguably the

biggest seller of e-books, uses the unhyphenated variant.

E-mail vs. Email

Searching the COCA I found that the hyphenated term e-mail occurs 23663 times, or 50.96

times per million words. The time period with the highest occurrence of the word is 2000-2004

(86.18 per mil) followed by the 2005-2009 (75.24 per mil), 2010-2012 (59.47 per mil), 1995-

1999 (34.92 per mil) and 1990-1994 (3.99 per mil) periods.

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Figure 3: The frequency of the word e-mail from 1990-2012 (COCA)

By contrast the unhyphenated term email, appears only 4349 times or 9.37 times per million

words in the corpus. The time period with the highest occurrence of the word is 2010-2012

(37.14 per mil) followed by the 2005-2009 (15.97 per mil), 2000-2004 (5.20 per mil), 1995-1999

(2.41 per mil) and 1990-1994 (0.07 per mil) periods.

Figure 4: The frequency of the word email from 1990-2012 (COCA)

Comparing these results we can see that the use of the hyphenated variant reached its peak in

the 2000-2004 period and then slowly declined, while the use of the unhyphenated variant

steadily increased throughout the 90s and 00s, culminating in the 2010-2012 period. Although

the hyphenated variant is still much more frequent in all time periods than its unhyphenated

counterpart, the fact that the number seems to be dropping while the use of the term email

without the hyphen is on the rise, is consistent with the changes found in the different

stylebooks consulted.

When searching the Corpus of Global Web-Based English for American English I found that the

hyphenated term e-mail appears 12039 times overall or 31.12 times per million words, while

the unhyphenated term email appears 46731 times overall or 120.81 times per million words.

This means that the spelling without the hyphen is almost four times as popular in web-based

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American English as the spelling with the hyphen. Compared to the results obtained in the COCA

search, where e-mail is more than five times as used overall as email, we can see that the

situation is similar as with e-book/ebook. In both cases the hyphenated variant is much more

used in published and edited texts, while the unhyphenated variant is prevalent in web-based

American English.

Conclusion

Based on the data obtained in this research we can see that both of the words studied are

words whose spelling is in transition, which is why it is hard to determine exactly how they

should be spelled. Judging by the official texts such as newspapers, magazines, fiction, academic

articles and transcribed spoken texts it seems as though the hyphenated version of both words

is, at least for now, the preferred spelling variant. However, taking into consideration the

different stylebooks we can see that this trend is slowly changing, especially concerning the

word e-mail, and that increasingly the hyphen is being omitted. According to the data gathered

from informal, web-based American English, the preferred version in both cases is the

unhyphenated one. So even though there is no one-size-fits-all solution for now, based on the

information collected in this research and general hyphenation trends, it is reasonably safe to

assume that in a few years’ time the unhyphenated variant of both words could become the

accepted and preferred one in all types of contexts.

Bibliography

1. Merriam-Webster. Accessed August 20, 2015. http://www.merriam-webster.com/

2. "The E- Prefix." World Wide Words. Accessed August 20, 2015.

http://www.worldwidewords.org/topicalwords/tw-eaa1.htm

3. The Chicago Manual of Style. 16th ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010.

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4. Minthorn, David. Associated Press Stylebook 2015 and Briefing on Media Law. Basic

Books, 2015.

5. "AP Stylebook Finally Changes." Mashable. Accessed August 20, 2015.

http://mashable.com/2011/03/18/ap-stylebook-email/

6. Microsoft Manual of Style. 4th ed. Redmond, Wash.: Microsoft Press, 2012.

7. Davies, M. "Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA)." Corpus of Contemporary

American English (COCA). Accessed August 22, 2015. http://corpus.byu.edu/coca/

8. Davies, M. "Corpus of Web-Based Global English." Corpus of Web-Based Global English.

Accessed August 22, 2015. http://corpus.byu.edu/glowbe/

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