Email Around the World
Connecting to people through electronic mail
Electronic Mail is one of the most popular methods of connecting to people over the Internet.
Why not postal?
Here's a partial list of why people love email so much:
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No postage required! Email is free (or unlimited usage for a flat fee).
Easy to understand and use. -
Can usually be sent or received from old and new computers alike.
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May be accessed from any computer connected to the Internet.
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Immediate delivery! Friends in Japan get your email almost instantly.
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Customize your message exactly the way you would like to.
Anatomy Lesson
So you have an email address?
That address has three parts: billybob@hotmail.com
billybob |
This is your username, login name, id, login-id, screen-name, member-name, etc. etc. This is the name that you picked when registering with your email service to define youself or some aspect of yourself. |
@ |
The "at" sign. This is how the Internet mail system finds out where your username/screen-name/login ends and the domain name begins. |
hotmail.com |
This is the domain name for this particular email address sampled above. |
Composing
In this section, I'm going to speak of the sender as the person composing and sending email and the recipient as the person receiving and reading the sender's email.
The email composition has a few parts:
To: |
This is where you type the full email address of whom you are sending an email. You can place multiple full email addresses in this line if you separate with a comma (,). This is a required field. |
Subject: |
This is the general theme or the focus of your email. It can help the recipient pick out the key concept of the email from the large body of text. Sometimes required (depending on mail service). |
Cc: |
Carbon Copy. This is where you would place full email addresses of secondary recipients who may benefit from the information in the email, although it's not intended to be directed to them specifically. |
Bcc: |
Blind Carbon Copy. You would use this if you wanted other people to receive an email being sent to a recipient, but don't want the recipient to know that you're sending it to other people. |
Attach: |
You can attach any type of file to your email (images, sounds, MS Word97 documents). The sender would upload them to the Internet, and the receiver would download them. |
Body: |
The meat-n-potatoes of the email. This is where you state the purpose of your email, ask questions, elaborate about yourself, etc. This is a required field. |
In order to send someone email, the sender must enter in the full email address. Some email systems may only require you to enter the screen-name/username when writing to someone on the same system.
For example, if billybob@hotmail.com was writing something to his friend zeppelinfan@hotmail.com, he may be able to type only zeppelinfan in the to field of his email. This is because they both use the Hotmail email service. However, it's good to get into the habit of using the entire email address all the time.
Send this!
There are also a couple options when sending or replying to emails.
compose: |
Send a new message to a new recipient. |
reply: |
Reply to a message that someone has sent to you. Using this button will reply only to the sender. Many times the original message sent to you will be included in the body of your reply. |
reply to all: |
If someone sent a message to you and a bunch of other people, reply to all will compose a message to all the recipients of the original message. |
forward: |
Takes a message you received, and sends it to a new recipient. |
trash: |
Deletes a message you have received. |
Staying in touch: Adding to your address book.
There are several ways to add to your address book in a hotmail, yahoo, or Gmail account. This example will be demonstrated through Hotmail, however many e-mail programs use basically the same setup.
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Click the "Contacts" tab at the top of the screen.
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Click once on the "New" tab on the upper left-hand side of the screen.
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Type in the first name and last name of the person you want to add.
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You also have to create a "Quickname", which can be anything you want to call this person.
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Go to the right-hand side of the screen to past the person's e-mail address in any of the three options: personal, work, or other.
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If you want, you can also add phone numbers, street addresses, or other information using the boxes underneath the "Online Addresses" box. Click the appropriate title to do so.
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Finally, click either the "Save" icon or the "Save and add another contact" icon in the upper left-hand corner.
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Use the "Help" option if you get stuck.
Another way is, if you receive an e-mail from a new person, you can save this person's e-mail address to your contacts by competing the following steps.
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Click reply, write an e-mail back to the new person, and click send.
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Once the e-mail has been sent, you will receive a confirmation form asking if you would like to add that address to your contacts.
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Click the box under "Add to hotmail contacts" and click the "Add" button.
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Then, fill in the information requested in the form, which includes the "Quickname", first name, and last name.
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Finally, click the "OK" button.
Remember, you can check and edit your contact list by clicking the "Contacts" tab at the top of the screen.
Bounce, bounce, bounce . . .
If you send an email and it shows up back in your inbox within the next day or so, something probably went wrong. Many times, your message will be included from an strange email address like mailer-daemon@bu.edu or robot@hotmail.com, with a description of what went wrong.
Sometimes the explanations are easy to read and understand. For example: user account inactive means that you may have provided an incorrect recipient name, or the recipient has cancelled their email account. Other times, it may say something like this address had permanent fatal errors. What does this mean? Who knows...
There are too many error messages with computers to describe them all in one lesson. The best advice can be to double check the email address for accuracy, type it in carefully, and re-send your message. If it gets bounced back again, try to locate the person by a different means (telephone, snail mail) and get their email address again.
What's in a name?
Ever wish you could have picked your name? When registering an email account, you can select any username you wish. However, you do have some physical and possibly some societal limitations.
Email address is already taken:
How confusing would it get if there were eight people with the email address kevinb@hotmail.com? How would mail know where to go? Mail servers will not permit you to take an address that is already taken. Some mail servers may not let you take an address which was taken a year ago and has since been cancelled. However, maybe another mail server does not have a kevinb registered. I may be able to get the email address kevinb@bu.edu through Boston University.
Email address contains unusable characters:
Depending on the mail server, some characters may not be used when selecting an email address. Common no-no's include quotes("), commas (,), periods (.), blank spaces, and sometimes even capital letters. When registering for an email account, check what character limitations you must adhere to.
Email address is not appropriate:
When selecting an email address to use for professional reasons, you may not want to use something inappropriate. For example, it may be embarassing to apply for a job and leave an email contact address as stinkybutt@hotmail.com. However, if you have several accounts, you can have a non-name identifying email address like the one above for friendly contact. The moral of the story is, try to have at least one email address that you would not be embarrassed to give to someone's mother.
Proceed to the next lesson: Email Attachments...
Site and course content by Kevin Berner, edited by Lori Wallace and Donna Wilbur
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