I've seen it used both ways. I don't think it has a convention. I personally like Email.

The Oxford English Dictionary uses email, personally I have found a problem using lowercase e for all appearances, which some clients insist on.
Tim
btw Stationery

Associated Press Stylebook hyphenates; to quote:

"e-mail Electronic mail or message. Also e-book, e-business, e-shopping. (the lowercase prefix is a exception to Webster's preference)"

Depends on whose style guide you're using*. As long as you're consistent, either works equally well.

* Publications do whatever the hell they want. The NY Times style, for instance, apostrophizes decades (1990's)!

Both are correct. However, "email" is probably more contemporary than "e-mail."

While either version of email/e-mail may be considered correct (although I'd go with the OED), "Im" without an apostrophe is not.

Many style guides still capitalize the Web and Web sites, like it's some sort of brand name.

Yep, we're one of those. Web site. We recently changed from E-mail to e-mail. Kept the hyphen.

I'm all for consistency. Doesn't much matter if it's online or on-line. Just don't mix.

K.

Many style guides still capitalize the Web and Web sites, like it’s some sort of brand name.

Web is an abbreviation of 'World Wide Web', which is a proper noun, so it should be capitalised. As for being a brand name, I'm not sure what the status of the full name is, but I wouldn't be at all surprised if it has been trademarked for protective purposes by the W3 Consortium.

"* Publications do whatever the hell they want. The NY Times style, for instance, apostrophizes decades (1990's)!" --SC

Ugh, that hurts.

While our house style (read: AP + internal counsel [I don't really get why he gets to decide it, either]) still has us using "Web sites", I'm glad our editors don't apostrophize decades. (And considering it's all about cars and it would be everywhere? phew!)

“e-mail Electronic mail or message. Also e-book, e-business, e-shopping. (the lowercase prefix is a exception to Webster’s preference)”

Yes, because the pronunciation simply changes when you lose the hyphen. Not only that, compounds like that just need the hyphen. I'm sure there are many examples of neat hyphenated compounds, but can't conjure any up at the moment.

Is web site one word or two?

Do you need to use a cap G when using the verb "to google"?

The general tendency in English seems to be for these compounds to close up over time (so 'space ship' became 'space-ship' became 'spaceship') except where the closed-up versions would cause potential confusion - looking like an existing word for example. At the moment, Oxford's Dictionary for Writers and Editors suggests 'website' (and, by the way, accepts both 'email' and 'e-mail' but prefers the former).

______________________________
Ever since I chose to block pop-ups, my toaster's stopped working.

"Web is an abbreviation of ‘World Wide Web’, which is a proper noun, so it should be capitalised. "

But an arbitrary proper noun. Radio used to be capitalized when it was new too.

As everyone stated, it really doesn't matter how you write it. Consistency is the key. Personally, we've been on the web long enough where I consider all of these generic nouns: web, email, website, internet.

as for e-mail, that was ALWAYS an odd one to me. Doesn't seem to follow any established english language rules. But, since when did english make that much sense to begin with. ;o)

"as for e-mail, that was ALWAYS an odd one to me. Doesn’t seem to follow any established english language rules."

Well, it does follow the compound rules where two words aren't easily joined. Spaceship is the one side of that where they grow towards each other, e-mail is the other. Because "e-mail" has an inherent defined pronunciation, it has my preference. In Dutch, it's mandatory because the pronunciation changes an awful lot without the hyphen. I won't be one to tell English people how to do it on this topic, however. I'm still foreign ;)

Donald Knuth has long ago chimed in on this one in a very cogent manner:

http://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/email.html

I for one think the matter is closed and we ought to all follow his advice-)

Best