E-mail: A Beginner's Guide

Understanding E-mail Vocabulary

Key definitions:

E-mail: Short for electronic mail, e-mail or email, is an electronic message, sent from one user to another via a network. E-mail addresses are composed of three parts: the user name, at sign (@), and the host name, or domain name. For example, president@whitehouse.gov contains all the ingredients for a valid e-mail address.

Header: Contains the name and address of the recipient, a cc (or carbon copy) field, and the subject of the message. Some e-mail programs also display your name and address, the date of the message, and a bcc (blind carbon copy) line.

Body: Large field that contains the message.

Signature: Most e-mail programs allow you to insert a signature at the bottom of your e-mail messages. This can be your name, title, company name, phone number, etc. or even your favorite quote.

Reply: This is when you reply to an e-mail you received; you will notice upon hitting the Reply button that "re:" is added to the beginning of the subject heading.

Reply All: When your name is part of a distribution list, you have the option to reply to all members of the list.
*Always think before you send. Be careful not to select "reply all" when you mean to reply to just one person!

Forward: When you forward, you are sending an e-mail message to someone not on the "to" or "cc" line. You will need to either type in the e-mail address or select the appropriate e-mail address from your address book.

SMTP: Simple Mail Transfer Protocol. This is a standard e-mail protocol understood by Internet computers all over the world.

Nuts and Bolts of sending and receiving mail

Signing up
If you do not have an e-mail address already, you can sign up with one of many free web-based e-mail services. Hotmail and Yahoo! are two services that provide free e-mail. When you register for an e-mail address, you will fill out a form asking for your name, address, zip code, occupation, and a few other bits of information. You will need to create a unique user name and password when you sign up. If yo have a fairly common name, it is likely that it is already in use by someone else. E-mail services will let you know this and will usually suggest an alternative. Remember to write down your user name and password when you sign up!

Composing your e-mail
Once you are signed up, you are ready to send (and receive) e-mail. To send e-mail, most e-mail programs have a button that either says New or Compose. Upon selecting this button, you will see a blank header and email message body on the screen. You will need to fill in the "To" line with a valid e-mail address (computers are very literal, you must include the entire address, do not leave off any part of the address), the subject line, and type your message in the appropriate box. You can include more than one name on the "to" line by separating e-mail addresses with a semi-colon.

Inbox
This is your main mailbox, where you will receive all of your incoming messages. Most e-mail programs tell you how many messages are in the inbox, as well as how many are new, unread messages. Most services allow you to sort your mail a number of different ways, such as by date, e-mail sender, by subject, etc. Web-based services usually provide an Options page allowing you to customize the look of your inbox.

If you are using a web-based e-mail service, you will be reminded from time to time that your inbox is taking up too much space and you will need to delete some of your messages.

Folders
E-mail programs provide a way for you to organize your mail if you want to save messages in a different location than the inbox. From your inbox, you can move mail into one of the folders you create. Most e-mail programs also allow you to create filters so you can bypass the inbox and send incoming mail directly to a specified folder.

Saving outgoing messages
Some e-mail programs automatically save your outgoing messages (in Outlook for example, they are saved in a Sent Items folder). In others, such as Hotmail, you need to check a box to indicate you would like to save the message after you send it. These messages are then stored in a Sent messages folder.

Saving drafts
This feature is useful if you need more than one session to compose an e-mail. You can save a draft and then work on it at a later time. When you save a draft, it is then stored in a Drafts folder. To retrieve it at a later date, you need to go into this folder to continue composing the e-mail.

Address Book
The address book is a convenient way to store contact information for the people you e-mail. You can create distribution lists as well, allowing you to email more than one person with just one click of the mouse. Most programs give you the option to save e-mail addresses from the message itself. For example, in Hotmail you will find in the header of every mail the option to Save Address to your Address Book.

Deleting e-mail
Remember to periodically delete your e-mail to keep the size of your inbox down.

You can delete e-mail in bulk by selecting the ones you would like to delete. Web-based e-mail services provide checkboxes, simply check the ones you want to delete and select the delete button. You can also delete messages as you go by selecting the delete button in the e-mail message.

Attachments
Most e-mail programs allow you to send and receive attachments. Sometimes web-based e-mail services do not allow certain attachments to download since you sometimes need special software to view a particular type of attachment. The standard jpegs, gifs, word docs, and text files should not cause a problem.

Computer viruses
Computer viruses are software programs designed by people for what are usually malicious purposes. Many computer viruses are transmitted via email. Sometimes you must open an attachment to introduce a virus, but not always. Some viruses do nothing more than cause a strange message to appear on the screen. Others, however, can go so far as to wipe out your hard drive. To protect yourself against these, you should consider investing in an anti-virus program if you have a home computer. These scan your disk in search of viruses and delete them. McAfee and Norton AntiVirus are two software programs that scan for viruses.

Netiquette - Rules of the Road:

Helpful suggestions from Learn the Net

Keep your communications to the point. Some people pay for Internet access by the hour. The longer it takes to read your messages, the more it may cost them. This is true whether you post messages to a newsgroup or a mailing list.
Remember that anything you post to newsgroup or type into a chat session is a public comment. You never know who's reading it, or who may copy it and spread it around.
When posting a message to a public bulletin board, forum, or newsgroup, stick to the topic. Don't indiscriminately post unrelated comments to every newsgroup you can think of. This practice, known as spamming, will quickly lead to another unpleasant Internet practice, flaming. What is flaming? Sometimes you might offend someone unintentionally. Be prepared to receive some angry e-mail or be treated rudely in a public discussion. This is called being flamed. If you attack back, you will spark a flame war. To contain the heat, the best response usually is no response at all.
If you post an ad to a newsgroup, or send it in an e-mail, clearly identify it in the subject line. That way people who aren't interested can delete it.
To keep messages short, use some common abbreviations:
"BTW" means "by the way." A "G" enclosed in brackets indicates grinning. A good one to keep handy in case you're worried about offending some one is "IMHO" - In My Humble Opinion.
FAQs (Frequently Asked Questions) are handy documents to read before asking questions. You should always consult them whenever available.

For further guides to Web abbreviations or "Emoticons" see the Glossary of Internet Terms or the High-Tech Dictionary.

Prepared by Coos Bay Public Library Reference Staff
541-269-1101
http://bay.cooslibraries.org
last revised 10/2007