Electronic Mail (Email)

What is Email?

Email, short for electronic mail, is a method of sending and receiving messages over the Internet. Unlike a phone call, an email does not require the recipient to be online at the same time you send it. You can send an email at any hour, to any number of people, anywhere in the world.

The message itself can be simple text typed directly into the email application, or it can include an attached file — a document, image, audio clip, or video — that is already stored on your computer or phone. Because you can attach an existing file, there is no need to retype its contents.

Getting an Email Account

To use email, you must first register with an email service provider by creating a mail account. These services may be free or paid. Popular free providers include Google (Gmail), Yahoo (Yahoo Mail), and Microsoft (Outlook).

Many organisations today also provide customised business email addresses for their staff, using the organisation’s own domain name. For example, an employee might have the address username@companyname.com.

Common Email Facilities

Once you have an account, you can use a range of standard features. Here are the main ones:

• Composing and managing messages – You can create (compose) a new email, attach files to it, or save it as a draft to finish and send later.
• Sending and receiving – You can send the same email to multiple recipients at once. When you receive a message, you can read it and reply.
• Carbon Copy (Cc) and Blind Carbon Copy (Bcc) – You can send a copy of an email to other people. With Cc, all recipients can see who else received the copy. With Bcc, the primary recipient and Cc recipients cannot see the Bcc recipients’ addresses.
• Forwarding – You can forward an email you have received to one or more other users.
• Spam filtering – The system automatically identifies and separates unwanted or suspicious emails (spam) from your main inbox.
• Organising emails – You can create folders and sub-folders to sort and store your messages (for example, a folder for work, another for personal mail). …