Talk:Aerogram

The following discussion is an archived discussion of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

[edit] Rationale

• There is no documentation in this article that the term "aerogram" is used anywhere in the world; though it would be consistent with American English style, the United States Postal Service used the seemingly un-American spelling "aerogramme" right up until they were discontinued earlier this year.
• Apparently, the proper term for this item is "air letter" in the UK and "aerogramme" elsewhere, including the U.S. The picture in this section (from the UK) suggests "aerogramme" is originally a French term; it uses that term below "par avion" and "air letter" below "by airmail", consistent with Universal Postal Union conventions for airmail (which call for the endorsement "airmail" in English and/or "par avion" in French).
• "Air letter" is not preferred for this article because that term is sometimes used in the U.S. to refer to letters delivered by FedEx or other overnight couriers. Therefore, the best title for this article is "aerogramme", recognizable in both American English and (from its usage in French on the actual items) British English. --RBBrittain 03:05, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

• Google just now found 36,700 "aerogram" and 124,000 "aerogramme" except in Wikipedia. Anthony Appleyard 16:10, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

Disagree

• Google results are a flawed thinking in this case by the fact that the word aerogramme is the name of a band (46,000+ hits alone for aerogramme +band), part of the name of a publication by liberal international (just under 10,000 hits for aerogramme +liberal +international), etc. That already halves the result for aerogramme.
• I cannot agree with RBBrittain so let's look at the history first.
• The correct name should be Air Letter or "Airletter" because that was the original English language name for it when it was introduced and even though some overnight services might use the term, I have not found it even used in any article, the name is not used yet as a Wikipedia article title. Air Letter is the correct English language name for the item.
• The UK still uses the term and has for many years in small letter added the word Aerogram, Aerogramme or Aérogramme, depending on the design, to comply with the bilingual norm for postal items.
• True, the use "aerogram" is not well documented yet. In fact this article in need of a bit of clean up and quite some expansion especially concerning the name origination.
• As we know, French is the international postal language, so most countries comply with the convention by adding a French word to their own language word for Air Letter. This word was often "Aerogram" in the 1940s, though some countries used "Aérogramme" instead.
• If we would change it to anything like this, then the French spelling "Aérogramme" would be correct, though Aerogram, Aerogramme and Aérogramme could all be redirects to "Air Letter" which is the renaming I would support fully.
• Look at the use of words in foreign languages for the Air Letter: Ireland used ""Airletter", Aerlitir" & Aérogramme, Finland used "Ilmakirje" & "Aerogram", in Trinidad & Tobago they started out using only Air Letter as did not commonwealth countries, and by 1954 added "Aérogramme" occasionally dropping the accent and still in 1995 using both names having never dropped "Air Letter from the usage.
• Have a look at some of these philatelic exhibits and see how the words "Air Letter" dominate the examples of these items. That's about it for now. Maybe I add more later ! ww2censor 19:47, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.