E-Mail Basics

Electronic mail, or e-mail, is without a doubt the most widely used Internet service. Internet mail is connected to most other e-mail systems, such as those within corporations. That means that after you master Internet e-mail, you can send messages to folks with accounts at most big organizations and educational institutions as well as to folks with accounts at Internet providers and online services. This article covers the e-mail basics you need to know, such as how to interpret acronyms and emoticons, how to figure out what your e-mail address is, and how to practice proper e-mail etiquette.

Choosing an E-Mail Program

Chances are, if you purchased this article, you have a choice between two e-mail programs made by the mighty Microsoft Corporation. Your choices are to use Outlook. The programs are similar in that they handle incoming mail the same way and store messages the same way. In both programs, messages are stored in folders and you can move messages from folder to folder to keep track of e-mail. However, Outlook is by far the more sophisticated program. For example, you can schedule tasks and keep a calendar in Outlook. Unless you are happy with an old-fashioned e-mail program such as Eudora or Netscape Mail, I suggest switching to Outlook or Outlook Express. These programs are very helpful when it comes to sifting through and organizing the barrage of e-mail that most people receive nowadays.

Abbreviations and Acronyms

EUOA! (E-mail users often abbreviate.) People frequently use abbreviations in e-mail messages, instant messages, and chat rooms to help communicate more quickly (and to type less).

E-Mail Addresses

To send e-mail to someone, you need his or her e-mail address. Roughly speaking, mail addresses consist of these elements:

-  Mailbox name: Usually, the username of the person’s account.

-  @: The at sign.

-  Host name: The name of the host’s computer. (See “Host names and domain names,” later in this article.) For example, elvis@gurus.com is a typical address, where elvis is the mailbox name and gurus.com is the host name. Internet mailbox names should not contain commas, spaces, or parentheses. Mailbox names can contain letters, numerals, and some punctuation characters, such as periods, hyphens, and underscores. Capitalization normally doesn’t matter in e-mail addresses. The most common situation in which these restrictions cause problems is in numeric CompuServe addresses, which consist of two numbers separated by a comma. When you’re converting a CompuServe address to an Internet address, change the comma to a period. For example, the address 71053,2615 becomes 71053.2615@compuserve.com as an e-mail address. Similarly, some AOL users put spaces in their screen names. You just drop the spaces when you’re sending the e-mail. If, for some reason, you must send mail to an address that does include commas, spaces, or parentheses, enclose the address in double quotes.

What’s my address?

If you’re accessing the Internet through a service provider, your address is most likely your_login_name@your_provider’s_host_name If you’re connected through work or school, your e-mail address is typically your_login_name@your_computer’s_host_name A host name, however, is sometimes just a department or company name rather than your computer’s name. If your login name is elvis and your computer is shamu.strat.gurus.com, your mail address may look like one of these examples: elvis@shamu.strat.gurus.com elvis@strat.gurus.com elvis@gurus.com or even this one: elvis.presley@gurus.com

Host names and domain names

Hosts are computers that are directly attached to the Internet. Host names have several parts strung together with periods, like this: ivan.iecc.com You decode a host name from right to left:  -  The rightmost part of a name is its top-level domain, or TLD (in the preceding example, com). See “Top-level domains,” later in this article.  -  To the TLD’s left (iecc) is the name of the company, school, or organization.  -  The part to the left of the organization name (ivan) identifies the particular computer within the organization. In large organizations, host names can be further subdivided by site or department. The last two parts of a host name are known as a domain. For example, ivan is in the iecc.com domain, and iecc.com is a domain name. For a list of organizations that can register a domain name for you, go to the following URL: www.icann.org/registrars/accredited-list.html Internet Service Providers often charge substantial additional fees for setting up and supporting a new domain. Shop around.

IP addresses and the DNS

Network software uses the IP address, which is sort of like a phone number, to identify the host. IP addresses are written in four chunks separated by periods, such as 208.31.42.77 A system called the domain name system (DNS) keeps track of which IP address (or addresses, for popular Internet hosts) goes with which Internet host name. Usually, one computer has one IP address and one Internet host name, although this isn’t always true. For example, the Web site at www. yahoo.com is so heavily used that a group of computers, each with its own IP address, accept requests for Web pages from that name. The most important IP addresses to know are the IP addresses of the computers at the Internet provider you use. You may need them in order to set up the software on your computer; if things get fouled up, the IP addresses help the guru who fixes your problem.

Top-level domains

The top-level domain (TLD), sometimes called a zone, is the last piece of the host name on the Internet (for example, the zone of gurus.com is com). TLDs come in two main flavors:  -  Organizational  -  Geographical It used to be that most systems using organizational names were in the United States. The com domain has now become a hot property; large corporations and organizations worldwide consider it a prestige Internet address. Address “haves” and “have-nots” are contesting a plan to add additional top-level domain names to those already in use. If the TLD is two letters long, it’s a geographical name. The two-letter code specifies a country, such as us for the United States, uk for the United Kingdom, au for Australia, and jp for Japan. The stuff in front of the TLD is specific to that country. Often, the letter group just before the country code mimics the style for U.S. organizational names: com or co for commercial, edu or ac for academic institutions, and gov or go for government, for example. The us domain used by schools, cities, and small organizations in the United States is set up strictly geographically. The two letters just before us specify the state. Other common codes are ci for city, co for county, cc for community colleges, and k12 for schools. The Web site for the city of Cambridge, Massachusetts, for example, is www.ci.cambridge.ma.us.

Port numbers

have simultaneous network connections to lots of other computers. Port numbers, which identify particular programs on a computer, keep the different connections straight. For example:  -  File transfer (FTP) uses port 21.  -  E-mail uses port 25.  -  The Web uses port 80. Typically, your file transfer, e-mail, or newsgroup program automatically selects the correct port to use, so you don’t need to know these port numbers. Now and then, you see a port number as part of an Internet address (URL). URLs versus e-mail addresses URLs (Uniform Resource Locators) contain the information that your browser software uses to find Web pages on the World Wide Web. URLs look somewhat like e-mail addresses in that both contain a domain name. E-mail addresses almost always contain an @, however, and URLs never do. URLs that appear in newspapers and magazines sometimes have an extra hyphen added at the end of a line when the URL continues on the next line. If the URL doesn’t work as written, try deleting that hyphen. E-mail addresses usually are not case-sensitive capitalization doesn’t matter but parts of URLs are case-sensitive. Always type URLs exactly as written, including capitalization.