What is the correct way to spell e words like email, ecommerce, etc.?
To be strictly “correct,” these e words should be written with a hyphen: e-mail, e-commerce, since e is short for electronic. The hyphen may disappear over time, since that is what midword hyphens tend to do. The Oxford English Dictionary (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1888-1928) gives the preferred form as one word email for the noun form, but e-mail for the verb form. The first record of this term dates to 1982 as a noun, then 1987 as a verb. Many dictionaries favor E-mail, which can be justified by analogy with such forms as A-bomb, C-section, and G-string.
