Ok, if you tuned in because I mentioned the possibility of beginning a beautiful blog journey today, then read no further. Even though it’s not eleven o’clock at night (see My first blog entry for details), and I have no excuse, I’m pretty sure today’s offering will be more of the same.

At one-thirty this morning, I was googling the word E-mail. Yes, I know what you’re thinking — Ah, the glamorous life of a writer.

Not long ago, an editor shared a rule of thumb concerning capitalization of the word I've always written as "email." I thought it was cool information, but didn’t write it down. Since it’s normally considered bad form to try and get info from an editor in the wee hours of the morning, and I wanted to send a proposal before falling into bed, I turned to my favorite search engine. Here’s what I finally figured out. . .(I can see all the writers opening a document so they can make a note of this and everyone else zoning out.)

E-mail (yes, it has a dash) is capitalized when it’s used as a noun. But when it’s used as a verb, as in “Don’t e-mail us, we’ll e-mail you” the “e” is lowercase. I went through my manuscript and synopsis and changed all my “email” nouns to E-mail and my “email” verbs to e-mail, then sent my proposal winging its way through cyber space. For about twenty seconds, I felt a strong sense of satisfaction. Then I read the next Google entry. It said that the lowercase, dash-less word “email” is fast taking the place of the versions I noted above.

Hmm. . .from now on, I’m making up my own rules. Google when used as a noun or an adjective is capitalized. But when used as a verb – “I’m just going to google it and see if I can drive myself crazy with conflicting opinions.”—it’s lowercase. That’s my capitalization rule for the day. Use it at your own risk.