cyber

E-, cyber-, and virtual are often used in names coined for “electronic” or computer-related counterparts of a pre-existing product or service. Of the three, virtual is generally considered to be misused in this context.
E-, standing for the word electronic, is used in the terms e-mail (electronic mail), e-commerce (electronic commerce), e-business (“electronic” business), e-banking (electronic banking), and e-book (electronic book). In this way its use (to describe what it follows as the electronic form of an otherwise pre-existing entity) is grammatically and contextually accurate.
Cyber-, derived from cybernetics, is used in the terms cybersex, cyberspace, cyberpunk, cyberhomes and cyberhate, but has been largely surpassed by e-. Cyber- also largely maintains grammatical and contextual accuracy, in that cybernetic denotes control of speech and functional processes. To the extent that it is used in the computer or electronic context to denote control (typically electronic or remote) of the thing represented by the word it precedes, it is used accurately. See, e.g., cyborg under “History”, below. To the extent that cyber- is used to describe entities existing (or events occurring) in cyberspace, its use is arguably accurate as well. However, the term cyberspace (one of the earliest and most widespread uses of the prefix cyber-) was itself one of the least grammatically accurate uses, in that cyberspace is not actual space electronically or remotely controlled. Thus “virtual space” or “virtual universe” would have been a more grammatically accurate term although arguably lacking the existential connotation provided by cyberspace. This connotation gives the term a contextual accuracy and prevents its being lured astray by association with the popular term virtual world, which has a very different and grammatically accurate meaning.
Virtual is correctly used in virtual reality, in that virtual reality simulates reality and in many ways approaches reality. The word virtual means “nearly”, “almost”, or “simulated”. Thus the key to accurate use of virtual as an adjective is that the thing represented by the word virtual modifies must not be the actual or real version of itself. Virtual describes that which approaches or simulates. Virtual reality is not actual reality; hence the label is appropriate. But such erroneous uses as “virtual communication” (for electronic communication) are entirely inaccurate because electronic communication is actual communication; therefore, it is not virtual. It is e-communication. It can even be cyber-communication where typed information is converted to an audio format for the recipient, although arguably that would be e-communication with cyber-speech.
These prefixes are productive. In Straubhaar’s and LaRose’s words, they are “added to almost everything nowadays”. Quinion notes that most of these formations are nonce words that will never be seen again. He observes that coinages such as “e-health” are unneeded, given that it is simply a coinage used to express the application of telecommunications to medicine, for which the name telemedicine already exists. He similarly points out the redundancy of e-tail with e-commerce and e-business. Martin likewise characterizes many of these words as “fad words”, and opines that many of them may disappear once the technology that resulted in their coinage has become better accepted and understood. As an example, he opines that “when using computers becomes the standard way to do business, there will be no need to call it ‘e-business’ — it may be just ‘business’".
There is some confusion over whether these prefixes should be hyphenated or in upper case. In the atypical case of e-mail, CompuServe used Email (capitalized and with no hyphen) from 1981 to 1984 as the trade name for its electronic mail service, but the form of the term has since tended toward that of many other e- terms. Quinion notes that e-mail was originally hyphenated and lowercase, and attributes the forms email, “E-mail”, and “Email” to uncertainty on the parts of newer Internet users who came across e-mail in the 1990s and were uncertain about whether the initial letter was an abbreviation or a prefix. Smith prescribes that the prefix e- should always be lowercase and hyphenated.Other grammarians, particularly descriptive (as opposed to prescriptive) grammarians, disagree. For decades, hyphens have been dropped from formerly-hyphenated words. As the combined meanings become more commonplace and readily understood, the need for hyphens subsides. In 2007 alone, the Oxford English Dictionary dropped approximately 1,600 hyphens, acknowledging that such words and phrases as bumblebee, ice cream, pigeonhole, test tube, and crybaby no longer required them. The hyphen’s short shelf life (formerly shelf-life) is particularly notable in compound nouns, of which e-mail is an abbreviation. If anything, grammatical accuracy would arguably mandate an apostrophe (e’mail) and not a hyphen. But new apostrophes are rare, which may be a result of the widespread misunderstanding of their proper use.