Way Ahead of the Curve   

Alex Beam's e-dress is beam@globe.com. Yes, that's right, e-dress. The short, quick, hip--as most every techword is--version of e-mail address.

Gosh, that seems so drawn-out now, staid even. E-mail address.

Beam's hipness, however, has been slow to catch on. The Boston Globe columnist has been using "e-dress" in his tagline for about four years. "The copy desk, once a year, tries to kill it," he says.

No wonder. A Lexis-Nexis search produced not a single other reporter using "e-dress," except for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette's David Bear, who once used the term within a story, and Glasgow, Scotland's Herald, which used it a few times back in 1996. The curve may eventually catch up to Beam, as "e-dress" is the favored term of a few word-lovers, including the one Beam first heard utter it, author Richard Lederer, also usage editor of the unabridged third edition of the Random House Dictionary. "E-dress" is also on the Oxford English Dictionary's list of possible new words. Jesse Sheidlower, principal editor of the North American editorial unit, says, "My expectation is that it probably will go in at some point."

"I just love it," Beam says. "It's certainly the word I've worked hardest to get into the language."