spam emails or spam

[everpine]

I have been a subscriber to your Internet service for the last two and a half years, but of late the amount of spam has increased dramatically. The popups in particular are very disturbing, and the contents of the spam emails are really offensive.

Can we replace the last sentence with following sentence without losing any original meaning?

The popups in particular are very disturbing, and the content of the spam is really offensive.

 

[Wilma_Sweden]

Popups on web pages usually fall into the subcategory of 'messaging spam' while 'email spam' is a different subcategory of spam. Therefore, your second suggestion is less specific, and you should retain the original one.

 

[Egmont]

In general, the use of the word "spam" has expanded from its original meaning of email only to wider use for telephone calls, text messages and more.

However, in this case, it is clear that the context refers only to email. You don't have to say "email" again.

That said, I am confused about pop-ups. Those usually come with web sites, not email. Are you sure they are the fault of your Internet service provider? Or are you mixing two different topics here?

 

[everpine]

In general, the use of the word "spam" has expanded from its original meaning of email only to wider use for telephone calls, text messages and more.

However, in this case, it is clear that the context refers only to email. You don't have to say "email" again.

That said, I am confused about pop-ups. Those usually come with web sites, not email. Are you sure they are the fault of your Internet service provider? Or are you mixing two different topics here?

I am mostly curious to know whether the following two sentences are replaceable to each other.

. the contents of the spam emails are really offensive
. the content of the spam is really offensive.

Shouldn't we perceive "the content of the spam" in the second sentence is singular and pertains to a specific spam, rather than those many spam emails tormenting the writer?

 

[Wilma_Sweden]

In general, the use of the word "spam" has expanded from its original meaning of email only to wider use for telephone calls, text messages and more.

However, in this case, it is clear that the context refers only to email. You don't have to say "email" again.

That said, I am confused about pop-ups. Those usually come with web sites, not email. Are you sure they are the fault of your Internet service provider? Or are you mixing two different topics here?

That was my point, it is not clear that the context refers only to email, since popups usually appear on web sites. These popups can of course also be offensive, and at the very least extremely annoying. Obviously, an ISP (=internet service provider) in the traditional sense can do nothing about web popups, they would normally just provide the internet connection and possibly an email service, and they can keep their own web site free of popups, but can do nothing about any other web site. Their email service is something they can do something about, such as installing improved spam filters on their email server.

I am mostly curious to know whether the following two sentences are replaceable to each other.

. the contents of the spam emails are really offensive
. the content of the spam is really offensive.

Shouldn't we perceive "the content of the spam" in the second sentence is singular and pertains to a specific spam, rather than those many spam emails tormenting the writer?

If you say "the content of the spam is really offensive", I understand that to mean that "all kinds of spam messages are offensive" - spam is uncountable and refers to the phenomenon rather than individual email messages containing spam. Since you are referring to two kinds of spam - web popups and email spam - I would suggest the following (if I have understood your complaint correctly):
"The web popups in particular are very annoying, and the content of the email spam is really offensive."

 

[everpine]

Thank you for your kind explanation.