On Tue, Nov 27, 2012 at 5:53 AM, Clive Hohberger <cp...@case.edu> wrote: > BTW, the routine capitalization of 'E' in E-mail came in the 1990's from > William Safire's "On Language" column in the NY Times newspaper: He made the > analogy with "T-shirt"
Is this capitalisation of "T-shirt" mandatory ? (of course the shape of the letter recalls the shape of the suit) I've seen frequently "t-shirt" (sometimes "tee-shirt" as well) when the term was lexicalized, with a clear pronunciation and understanding by itself, without reference to the shape of the letter (which is not always the actual shape of the suit). The lexicalization make the capitalization no longer necessary for understanding. The same is true for "E-mail" and it's normal to adopt then the normal capitalization. The same phenomenum occurs when abbreviations become acronyms (not spelled letter by letter) : letters after the initial are frequently written in lowercase (e.g. in French "Insee" instead of "INSEE") and even the first initial may become lowercase by the lexicalisation process (e.g. in French where the recent "PACS" abbreviation was rapidly changed to an acronym "Pacs", and lexicalized as the common noun "pacs", with derived terms : all conjugated forms of the regular 1st group verb "pacser").
