To think saying 'is that all one word?' when taking down an email address is pointless?

[TheGreaterGood]

Phone person: Can I take your email address please?

Me: yes, it's 'TheGreaterGood...'

Phone person: Is the all one word?

Me: it's an email address, were you expecting spaces?

Surely an email addresses is 'one word' - what on earth do they mean? Or am I missing something?

Yes, I do have more important things to worry about but worrying about trivial shit like this helps distract me...

Maybe they're checking the words aren't separated by underscores, dashes etc. My email address is [email protected] so it might be they're checking for something like that?

Although, I always say 'underscore' and would expect other people to but it might be they've had bad experiences of people not mentioning punctuation and symbols.

I agree, although I would have thought it would have died out by now because we're more used to email addresses.

The.Greater.Good@
TheGreaterGood@

Etc

They mean no full stops.

My email address is dowagercuntess@ not dowager.cuntess@

I sometimes have people asking about capital letters. I am no IT guru but I don't think email addresses generally distinguish case, do they?

I think that is OK because it could be separated by dots - [email protected] for example. What annoys me is when people say "is that all lower case" because I don't think it makes a difference - willing to be corrected though!

YABU - there could be underscores or hyphens i.e. thegreatergood

Cross post Gaspode! Sorry!

Ah, I see - that's probably it. Perhaps I was being a bit literal!

Yep I'm pretty sure you can put e-mail addresses in any old case and they will work...waits to be told I'm wrong by the next 10 posts

Here's something to blow their minds even further: if it's a gmail address (not sure about other providers, definitely gmail), you can add as many dots as you like, it doesn't recognise them and it doesn't change where it goes. Likewise capitalisation. [email protected] and [email protected] are functionally the same address and if I owned it you could use either to send me mail.

YABU - there could be underscores or hyphens i.e. thegreatergood

Only a dimwit would say the words without also saying 'underscore' or 'hyphen' etc, surely?

They will be checking for . _- or any other punctuation.

I work in admin, you would be amazed the amount of people that think I should know automatically where they have placed their punctuation and then wonder why I can't send them emails!

Laura and Gaspode yes indeed, capitals, lower-case, mix it up randomly... if you've got the right letters that's all that matters.

OP it's just a way of checking whether there are hyphens, underscores or stops within the email address.

Some people still really aren't tech savvy enough to fully understand their own email address. Last year my DH was communicating with a ... government official ... and in shifting their contact from phone to email, the official had to leave the phone to find out what the department email address was, then read it out to DH spelling, "government, then there's kind of a space, but it's not a space, it's like one of those line things, but not like between words, because it's right down at the bottom of the letters, like it's the line you'd be writing on, if you were writing, then department, at..." DH stuck to snail mail.

Gottaget - I'd have though so too...until I read MaxPepsi's post!

Only a dimwit would say the words without also saying 'underscore' or 'hyphen' etc, surely?

Yes, presumably they would, but people without any punctuation tend to say emailaddress, 'all one word' automatically, just for clarification. I know I do!

"all lower case" is the one that annoys me!

also, "how are you spelling that?"

As if they know how it is spelt but want to check how I personally spell it

I am continually asked where the hyphen/underscore/fullstop is in mine. THERE ISN'T ONE I WOULD HAVE SAID SO IF THERE WAS doesn't seem to be an adequate answer.

Nor does not having any numbers at the end.

Well, sorry folks, it is simply firstnamesecondname@... I have had it since the 90s and, just like my mobile number (which I have had for the same amount of time) I do actually know it and use it regularly and correctly.

Mind you, the lovely young personage from t'internet provider was surprised... "Did they have the internet back then?" - nasty little gobshite

Mind, that is refreshing since most 'kids' can't believe such stuff was once non existent!

Pallas

I take down people's email addresses and always ask because so many people will say 'oh no, there's a full stop in the middle' or whatever. Also, people do use unusual spellings so it's always worth asking.

Gottaget - I'd have though so too...until I read MaxPepsi's post

You would be right, though, MaxPepsi's post proves they are dimwits.

The capitals thing in email addresses and web addresses annoys me.
I was also going to mention the gmail full stop thing!

My favourite is when someone says: "can I take your name?" And I say "it's Sound System, that's s-o-u-n-d, surname System s-y-s-t-e-m.". And they say, "and your email address?" And I say, "it's [email protected]" and they say "and how do you spell that?".

The same way as I spell my name, which I just spelled out 10 seconds ago, obviously! Why would I have an email address that is my name, but spelt differently from my name?!

Urgh dolphins that's my pet hate too

Is that with a capital letter?

Err it's an email address - IT DOESN'T MAKE ANY DIFFERENCE!!!

Lower/uppercase makes no difference but when they were new people thought they did. And some people still think that. It's like for ages the BBC used to insist on spelling out websites by saying "www.bbc.co.uk forwards slash games" (or whatever). It's obviously a forwards slash like EVERY other website, it's only addresses on your local file system which use backwards ones. C:\ for example.

I do actually have an email address which is my name but spelt differently I created it when I was an art student and I thought it was all "creatyv" - the first letter of my surname and the last letter of my first name kind of merge because it makes it into one long word, which isn't a real word, but sounds a bit like the kind of made up word you'd have as a forum handle. I'm forever explaining that it's XXXX without the first x. And my surname is close to a real word, but spelled differently from that word, too. So it's just a general mishmash of bad spelling opportunities.

Really sorry to the person who has my actual name, or the word close to my name, as an email address

Yes OP I feel your pain. My work email is ridiculously long and I feel like I spend all day spelling it out. It also sounds like something else so conversations go like this:

Me "it's firstname.lastname.."

Caller "Can you spell that?"

Me "yes.. @HNMmanufacturers WITH AN S AT THE END"

Caller "HANDMMANUFACTURER?"

"No, H N M..Hotel, November, Mike ffs do you not know the name of the company? manufacturer with a S on the end"

"all one word?"

AAAAAARRRRRGGGGGHHHHH.