Use Of The Phrase "Air Mail" V. "Airmail"

Linn's Stamp News recently published an article that included this curious quote:




I never knew that before. I always thought "air mail" and "airmail" were used interchangeably through the years, however, in just looking at US Airmail stamps, I note that the first stamp where "airmail" is referenced as one word was not until 1973.

If the Linn's article is correct, pre-1950 usage was always "air mail" (two words).

Does anyone have any examples of references showing whether or not this statement is indeed accurate?

Actually, I dug up these recent airmail etiquettes suggesting that the USPS has used "Air Mail" and "Airmail" interchangeably through the 1990s at least:

I would guess that if you tried asking this question of the American Air Mail Society (AAMS), you would get your answer before the question was finished - they use the term "Air Mail" in their publications from day one. However, if you reference the Sanabria airmail publications, they change from "Air post" to "Airmail" in the title of their catalogues at some point in their history.

Brian

Just usage, language changes over time. Once we had aeroplanes, then airplanes, now more usually, planes. For me, they had it right first time.

Terry

Edited to add one of the very best aeroplanes. I believe the DC3 still has the best air safety record of all aeroplanes, Including its WWll service. Just so nice, superb aeroplane. TC.

As quondam editor, I would suggest that it's just a matter of orthographic style. The tendency over the last 50 years has been to spell as one word what was once hyphenated or spelled as two words. Anti-trust becomes antitrust, pretty well across the board.

Similarly the trend is to use fewer capital letters. In the 18th century, capitals were used for every third or four word; today they are used rarely, sometimes creating confusion. Similarly, the trend is toward less use of commas. Again, sometimes that leads to confusion.

But I would read nothing more into the shift from air mail to airmail. If you start looking, I think you'd find many instances of "air mail" used right now. The trend may well be from two to one word but the Linn's article is wrong to suggest that a shift in terminology took place, UNLESS the article intended to say that the Post Office shifted. That would be documentable. It also might reflect editorial change similar to the general orthographic culture but there might have been a point in which official documents shifted from two to one. As a whole, I think it's still fairly mixed.

Now, if you were documenting a shift from "air post" to airmail, that would be a different story. It would have, back then, seemed very odd to write airpost as one word. Had air post remained the dominant term, then air mail might have remained two words. But when mail is more or less used interchangeably with post, airmail becomes feasible. I don't know how frequently "post"" was used in the 19th century, for instance, i.e., how often people wrote things like "I just dropped a letter in the post." Perhaps there were differences among British, American, Canadian, Australian, Indian usage.

Interesting. I've seen both written or handstamped on covers and never really knew which was the right one if either. I tend to use airmail more than I use air mail just because when writing titles for ebay descriptions space is limited.

When T. E. Lawrence submitted his second final draft of "The Seven Pillars of Wisdom" to his publisher, he got back the following.

"You have spelled the name of your camel as Jedha, and also jedhah, in different places in your book. Is this intentional? Please, which is the correct spelling?"

He replied "Yes, she was a splendid beast"

Terry

PS. The full exchange here:
http://mideasti.blogspot.co.uk/2009...problem.html
Scroll down page to last entry.
TC.

www ww WWWWOWWW... Great DC-3 Photo Terrence! Hope you don't mind, but I saved it with my other DC-3 Images also, but this one is now the best of the lot.

In reference to the quote by Linn's, I think that it is possible that the gentleman who wrote that Airmail quote is simply approaching senility and that the entire quote should be completely disregarded. This could explain and should solve the confusing, yet entertaining problem which here, we now have.



-IBFS

Hi IBFS,

I pulled that off the web. Ok for personal use. I will try to find a better one for you. I used to live near Browning Barracks at Aldershot British Army base where they had a wartime DC3 in Normandy Invasion colours parked on the grass. It is one of the very few beautiful things I had considered stealing in my past life.

Here she is at Aldershot.....



Terry

PS. But now parked at Colchester where our Paratroop Regiments are based. TC.

More Douglas DC3 photos here....
http://britmodeller.com/forums/inde...47-skytrain/

Also this difference...haha






Or try this web page.
http://www.americanairmailsociety.o..._airmail.htm

You say tomatoe I say tomato, potatoe, potato.............

Way back in 2011 I was figuring out how to label stamps on ebay, so I searched around using different words for airplane stamps.

This is what I found at that time.

In USA
Airmail (s) / Air Mail = 22,305
(search for airmail and 'air mail' is found also)
Air = 13,555
Aviation = 3651
Plane (s) = 3548
Airplane (s) / (Air Plane (s)) / Aeroplane (s) = 3147
Air Plane (s) / (Airplane (s)) = 3332
Aircraft (Air Craft) = 2155
Air Craft (Aircraft) = 2183
Transport = 1790
Transportation = 1058
Pioneer = 624
Biplane = 153
Pilot (s) = 484
Aviator (s) = 185

"You say tomatoe I say tomato, potatoe, potato............. "

Or, as Dan Quayle would put it, "You write potato, I write potatoe".

Perhaps conjoining air & mail into one word better conveys that air mail is not mail full of air or air sent by mail.

I checked with God (Google on d'net), and see that "airmail" is 5x more prevalent than "air mail" (the quotes are to force the exact phrase), though that does not address the temporal dimension ... the same search in Google Books (an easy way to compare the contemporary with the antiquated) shows "air mail" and "airmail" used with equal frequency.

Interestingly, "school teacher" is >10x more prevalent than "schoolteacher", and I won't bother checking "medicaldoctor" or "taxaccountant". so perhaps combining two words into one is more appealing when they are single-syllable words?

For myself, I just love using InLine Caps, though I have not thought to spell that as InLineCaps.

Cheers,

/s/ ikeyPikey <== LookIt

". . . though I have not thought to spell that as InLineCaps"

I prefer the term CamelCase. Much better imagery.

Then you have upper CamelCase and lower camelCase.

Somewhere along this timeline we started writing computer programs in languages, virtually all of which proscribed against the use of the space in variable names.

Methinks there's been bleed-over.