It's one of the ways that people use the WWW to communicate. It's just like normal mail - you create it and send it to the person you want to read it, that person reads it and can reply to you - but it's different, too. It's faster, cheaper and easier! And once an email has been typed into a computer, you can send it to thousands of people as easily as one.

To use email you must have access to a mailer program either on your computer or on the computer where you have an Internet account.

Most mail programs allow you to send a single message to one or many users, review the contents of your "inbox" and select what messages you want to read, reply directly to the sender without having to type in their address again, forward the message to another user or users, save and store messages, print a copy of the message and attach a file to your message.

To send messages to someone over the Internet, you need their email address.

WHAT DO E-MAIL ADDRESSES MEAN?

They serve the same purpose as postal addresses. In order to send email you have to know the correct address. They may look like Greek but they are easy once you break them down.

The most standard form of email address looks like this: username@host.domain. When you secure an Internet account you select a "username". Your provider will tell you how many characters you're allowed. The "@" sign, pronounced 'at', is the part of the address that separates your computer from the provider computer. Your Internet Service Provider (ISP) is the "host". The "domain" part of the address tells the world what kind of network you are on: .com (commercial), .edu (school), .org (organization), .gov (governent), .net (network), etc. For example: if you address an email to SteveCase@aol.com, you are saying send email to "username" SteveCase, at "host" AOL (America Online), a commercial "domain".

E-MAIL ETIQUETTE

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