E-Mail

Sections:
Writing A Basic Message
Frequently Asked Questions about E-Mail

Electronic Mail, or e-mail, is one of the top features of the internet. Without it, the internet would not be what it is today. You can send a message, a file, or both, to someone, or many people, anywhere in the world (as long as they have access to the internet).

Writing A Basic Message

All e-mail programs are generally the same; they are simply organized differently. Below is a picture of what an e-mail program's message window generally looks like. All e-mail programs, or clients have many features, but do the same basic thing. You will probably be able to figure out how to use your e-mail client pretty easily, but in case you've still got some questions, the picture below should help.

1. "To:" (sometimes "For:")-This is where you type in the address of the person to whom you want to send the message.

2. "Subject:" (sometimes "RE:")-This is where you type a short description of your message. This is what the recipient of your message will see before they see the whole message, and it may be what the person uses to decide whethere or not they will even bother to read you message. There is so much junk e-mail being sent, some people receive hundreds of messages a day, and they don't read half of them.
   NOTE--"RE" can mean "Regarding" or "Reply/Response." When someone replies to your message, you will most likely see the subject you typed with "RE" in front of it.

3. Body-This is what contains the actual message. This area is straight-foward, and it does not require much explanation. See 'Net Safety for some advice on safe e-mailing.

4. "CC:"-Carbon Copy-If you wanted to send a message to more than one person, you would type in the other addresses here (the first one goes in the "To" area). The addresses in this box have to be seperated by spaces, commas, or other symbol. See your e-mail program's help file for info on what to do for your particular program.

5. "Send"-Click here to send your message.

6. "Attach"-This allows you to attach a file to your e-mail message. You can send someone any type of file, but don't send huge files-it takes a long time for both you to upload the file when you send the message and for the receiver to download it when they get the message.

Frequently Asked Questions About E-Mail

• I have America Online, and so do most of my friends. Why can my friends can leave off the "@aol.com" when they write to me (and vice versa), but if someone who doesn't have America Online writes to me, they need to add the "@aol.com" after my screen name?
  This is a very common question, and it involves a very hard-to-understand-at-first fact. To answer the question, when sending mail using a service like America Online and you and whoever you're sending the mail to is using the same online service, you can leave off the domain name of the address, because the mail will never reach the internet, it stays within that particular services' network of computers. You may undertstand this after you read the next part: Online services like America Online, Compuserve, The Microsoft Network, etc., provide access to the internet, but they also provide their own services. These services include chat rooms, bulletin boards, and games. While all of these are also available on the internet, the online service makes it very easy for you to use them, and they are integrated into your online software. Someone who does not use America Online, Compuserve, etc. probably accesses the net through an internet service provider, or ISP, that does not give you all these extra goodies. Someone using an ISP like this always has to include the domain name when they write to someone, even if they happen to use the same ISP. Most ISP's are locally based companies, and their subscribers live in the same region as the company.