Changing the attribute name used by error messages

Is it possible to change the attribute name displayed to the user via the error_messages_for tag? For example if you wanted to use 'email' as an attribute name and db column but 'e-mail' as the attribute name displayed on the webpage. I'm thinking of using the Custom Error Message plugin (http://wiki.rubyonrails.org/rails/pages/Custom+Error +Message) but you have to rewrite the whole error message.

Any better ideas?

I was hoping for a slightly more elegant solution that doesn't require monkey patching. Also the code states that human_attribute is deprecated:

      # Transforms attribute key names into a more humane format, such as "First name" instead of "first_name". Example:       # Person.human_attribute_name("first_name") # => "First name"       # Deprecated in favor of just calling "first_name".humanize       def human_attribute_name(attribute_key_name) #:nodoc:         attribute_key_name.humanize       end

Thanks for the reply. Any other ideas? I think using the custom error message plugin might be the best option.

Eric