Sin and Syntax has been called a subversive grammar guide. But its ultimate purpose isn’t good grammar; it’s prose that makes us laugh, well up with tears, or just say “ahhhh.”

Likewise, this blog isn’t about playing “gotcha.” It’s about showing that a deep sense of how English works saves us from comic errors, pompous pronouncements, and mere mediocrity.

With that, let’s plunge into the peculiarities of prose….

A listener writes to a radio show via www.kpbs.org/words:

My concern today is with the plural of the word email. It doesn’t sound right to me when some one says “We received a lot of emails concerning today’s pod cast.” The plural mail is mail. So doesn’t it sound better to say, “We received a lot of email concerning today pod cast.” I seem to be in the minority with this opinion since virtually all broadcast journalists say emails. One could argue that there is no such thing as a singular form of mail. No one ever says. “I received a mail today”, but it is perfectly proper to say, “I received a piece of mail today”. Finally, I have never heard anyone say “My postman is unhappy because I receive a lot of mails”.

The caller raises a good point. The thing is, email has taken on a life of its own as a word and breaks all kinds of rules.

Originally, the concept was electronic mail. Mail–that good old noncount noun–was the operative word and electronic was merely an adjective modifying it. But the concept was invented by the electronic world and its inventors began to have their way with it. In that world of quick response and rapid typing, capital letters and hyphens were considered speedbumps and removed from the path whenever possible.

While the traditional copy editors were insisting that the ONLY way it should be spelled was E-mail, almost everyone else had already started using e-mail. Eventually the poobahs declared that e- was a “combining form” and was OK. Thank you very much, but the world had already moved on to email. We acknowledged this in 1996 in Wired Style.

I would argue that if we were still using “electronic mail” then email would be a noncount noun. But email has come to have a singular meaning, and email has come to be the plural.

What can I say? Language changes. Ask your caller if he ever uses the words “agendas” or “memos.” In Latin, of course, agendum and memorandum are singular, agenda and memoranda are plural. But English wreaks its own lively havoc.