Lesson 2.1.pdf

Lesson 2.1: Email Basics What are Electronic Mails, or Emails? Electronic mail is a method of trading messages between people using electronic devices’ mail. E-mail, short for electronic mail, is information stored on a computer exchanged between two end-users over telecommunications. In simple te...

Lesson 2.1: Email Basics What are Electronic Mails, or Emails? Electronic mail is a method of trading messages between people using electronic devices’ mail. E-mail, short for electronic mail, is information stored on a computer exchanged between two end-users over telecommunications. In simple terms, e-mail is a message that may carry text, files, images, or other attachments sent through a network to a designated individual or group of individuals. It allows you to post, receive messages to and from anyone with an e-mail address anywhere in the world. Two Ways to Send & Receive Email The earliest use of the internet is for sending and receiving electronic mail, or email. There are two ways to send and receive an email–via email program or web-based email. An email program, also called email client software, enables you to send emails by running email software on your computer, which interacts with an email server at your internet access provider to send and receive an email. With web-based email or webmail, you send and receive messages by communicating via a browser with a website. The big four email carriers currently are Yahoo! Mail, Windows Live Hotmail (discontinued), Gmail (Google), and AOL Mail. The advantage of web-based email is that you can easily send and receive messages while traveling anywhere in the world. Moreover, because of the mail servers storing all your outgoing and incoming messages and folders, you can use personal computers and browsers to keep up with your email. Many users will rely mostly on an email program on their personal computer, but they will switch over to web-based email to check messages when traveling without their PCs. How to Use Email You will need an email address, of course, a sort of electronic mailbox used to send and receive messages. All such addresses follow the same approach: username@domain. For example, [email protected]. The username: juandelacruz. The username, or user ID, identifies who is at the address. There are many ways that the username might be designated, with and without capital letters, numbers, or special characters. Domain name: vsu. The domain name, located after the @ (“at”) symbol, tells the location and type of address. Periods (called “dots”) separates domain- name components. The domain portion of the address provides specific information about the area–where the message should be delivered. Top-level domain: edu. The top-level domain, or domain code, is a three-letter extension that describes the domain type:.net,.com,.gov,.edu,.org,.mil,.int– network, commercial, government, educational, nonprofit, military, or international organization. Country: ph. Some domain names also include a two-letter extension for the country. Creating an Email Account Most email carriers provide free email services, and the account creation can be relatively straightforward. Different email carriers may require similar information, such as your name and a username. For the sake of this lesson, try to create a new email account using Google's Gmail service. 1. Open the Gmail account registration website. Enter https://www.google.com/gmail/about/ in the web browser. It will open a page with information regarding Gmail. 2. Click Create an Account. This button will take you to the first page in the account creation section. 3. Input your first and last name. Enter your first name into the text box with a field "First name" and last name into the text box labeled "Last name." 4. Come up with a username for your Gmail account. The text box labeled "username," type in the username you want to use for your email address. For this lesson, your username must be of the format: firstname_lastname—for example, juan_delacruz. 5. Enter a password for your Gmail account. Type your chosen password into the "Password" text box and "Confirm password." You can only proceed if these passwords match. 6. Click on the Next button. Afterward, the page will require you to provide appropriate information to proceed with the account creation. Essential Parts of an Email Figure 1. An example of an email composition. To: The email address of the primary recipient Cc: Previously means carbon copy, but now it means courtesy copy. When referring to email “cc,” this means every recipient email address you enter into the “to” and “cc” field will be able to see who the recipients of the email message are. Bcc: Blind carbon copy. The email address you add to the “bcc” field will receive a copy of the email message, but this will be unknown to the other recipients. Subject: The subject is a very brief topic sentence describing the content of the email body and displays in most email systems that list email messages individually. Body: The email body, which contains text that is the actual content. It may include signatures–automatically generated information that is inserted by the sender’s email system.