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, juandelacruz@vsu.edu.ph.
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.
