E-mail stands for electronic mail. Some people call regular mail that you send through the post office snail mail because it is so slow. When you use e-mail you can send messages anywhere in the world in just seconds. There are a lot of e-mail programs that you can use. Some e-mail programs come with a browser, Microsoft Internet Explorer and Netscape Navigator have them. There are also other e-mail software programs that you can buy.

This is what you have to do if you want to if you want to send a person e-mail. First you have to see if the person you are writing to has an e-mail address. Then if they do, you can use your e-mail program to write the message. All e-mails programs have a place to put in the address of the person you are writing to, and a title for the subject you are writing about. When it is typed you can press the send button and it will send the e-mail.

The information you send travels over the internet in little packets. Every packet of the e-mail you sent contains the e-mail address. When the message gets where it's supposed to go to, the packets hook back together in the right order. Then the internet makes sure that all of the packets of information have arrived. The information is stored on a server until you open it up on your computer.

You will notice that when you send e-mail the address has different parts. One part of the address is an abbreviation of the country where your e-mail came from. E-mail that has a uk in the adress came from the United Kingdom. They are in lower case because in an e-mail address all the letters are in lower case. Here are some country codes.

aq Antarctica, au Australia, at Austria, be Belgiam, ca Canada, ch Switzerland, de Germany, dk Denmark, es Spain, fi Finland, fr France, gr Greece, ie Ireland, in India, it Italy, jp Japan, mx Mexico, nl Netherlands, no Norway, nz New Zealand, pl Poland, pt Portugal, sw Sweden, tr Turkey, tw Taiwan, uk United Kingdom, za South Africa

Emoticons:

When people are sending messages on the computer, it hard to tell what kind of a mood they are in. Someone could be joking and if you don't know them, you could think they are being rude or sarcastic. To help people communicate, there are rules called netiquette. Netiquette is the manners that you need to use when typing messages on the internet.

Did you now that WHEN YOU TYPE EVERY WORD IN CAPITALS LIKE I'M DOING RIGHT NOW that means you are YELLING at that person. It is considered very rude. Also, using bad language or swear words is not allowed.

People have made up symbols that can be typed that show different moods. These are called emoticons (it combines the words emotions and icons.) It helps to keep e-mail letters short and when you are in a chat room you can tell when someone is kidding. A popular emoticon in the smile. It looks like this :-) It means that I am in a good mood.

 

Here are some emoticons you could use in a e-mail letter you are sending to someone.

Abbreviations

Abbreviations are letters that stand for words. We are used to seeing abbreviations like Dr. for doctor and Mt. for mountain. There are abbreviations that people use on the internet. Here are some:

BFN Bye for now

 

BRB Be right back

 

IMHO In my humble opinion

 

FYI For your information

 

ITC It's the coolest!

 

LMHO Laughing my head off

 

OIC Oh, I see...

 

PMFJI Pardon me for jumping in

 

ROFL Rolling on the floor laughing

 

TTFN Ta-ta for now

 

WYSIWYG What you see is what you get

 

TTYL Talk to you later