What's email?

I want to know what I'm doing

what's email?
writing an email message
- from the bare bones
- doing it right
sending email
- why aren't people receiving my email?
picking up email
- why isn't my email coming through?
sorting and reading email
replying to email
what do all the symbols mean?
so what is "a good email program"?

What's email?

Email is e-mail, which stands for 'electronic mail'.

This means that you don't  have to hand-write or print out a 'hard copy' of your message or letter on paper.
You don't  have to write an address on a paper envelope.
You don't  have to stick a stamp on, drive or walk to the nearest mailbox and post your letter.
And you don't  (really - this is the best bit) have to wait days for your letter to get there, or pay more to send a letter overseas.

Email is:

typed into a message window on the computer screen
a message which includes the email address of the person you are 'sending to'
a message which also includes your own 'reply-to' email address (if you ever want anyone to write back!)
sent and received through your modem connection to your Internet Service Provider, whose mail server computer is in turn connected to the rest of the Internet
incredibly cheap: you pay for your local phone call to connect to your local Internet Service Provider, then you pay your ISP the agreed amount per hour while you are connected ... email messages are usually very small files (not cluttered up with formatting junk, pictures or other files stuck onto them) so you can send or receive an email message in seconds!

Key terms used above: message window

Whenever you tell your email program that you want to write a New Message , or to Reply to a message you have received, the program will open a message window on your screen.
This window will have separate 'boxes' for the essential information: who it's to, who it's from, what it's about (subject), and of course what you want to say (body of the message).

email address

Like your address on envelopes, your email address tells people who you are and where you live, and it is unique — one of a kind.
Nobody else in the world has the same email address as you.
Your email address is usually made up like this:
your user name for connecting to the Internet (AT) the name of your Internet Service Provider (DOT) based at this kind of organization (DOT) in this country
for example, my email address is:
clytie@riverland.net.au
where
clytie is my username,
@ stands for 'at',
I connect to riverland,
a computer at an Internet business,
in australia.
Some email addresses look different to this example.
For more information on the structure and meaning of Internet addresses (including an alphabetical listing of country codes), please see Where are things on the 'Net? About addresses in a town with no road maps on this site.

'reply-to' email address

Just as paper letters and parcels usefully have the 'sender's address' written on them, email letters need a sender's address.
Because of the enormous amount of SPAM (junk email) which abuses the email system (see What is Spam and how do I deal with it? on this site), mail servers will not send your message  unless it includes your correct email address (your sender's address).
Also, how is anyone going to be able to get back to you, if they don't get your address with the message?
If your correct email address  is sent with the message, all someone has to do is to choose Reply after opening your message, and his or her email program will set up a message window with your address already correctly typed in!
With your correct reply-to address entered in your email program setup, your  message will  be returned to you if it can't be delivered (explaining what went wrong), and other people's messages to you  won't get lost.

modem connection

The only time you need to be connected (and paying for online time!) for email is when you are sending and/or receiving mail.
Your modem (a telephone for your computer) connects you to other computers.
You only need to be connected to other computers when you are getting something from them or sending something to them.
Once you have got your mail from the mail server, all those messages are now sitting on your computer, so you can read them in your own time, like any other information that is stored on your computer.
When you are writing messages, you are writing them onto your own computer, just like writing something in word-processing or in any other program you use there.
Reading and writing messages takes time, and is easier to do if you are feeling relaxed, and not counting off 'online time' being added to your account!
After all, it only takes a few seconds to send or receive an email message.
You might write a very brief message while still online, then send it immediately, but otherwise, why rush yourself?

Internet Service Provider (ISP)

Your Internet Service Provider is like an airport for your journey onto the Internet.
You have to get to an airport before you can fly anywhere else in the world.
The airport people co-ordinate the travel, oversee security at the airport, offer you facilities you need there, and are available for contact within whatever hours they can afford.
Your ISP is permanently connected (aside from the dreaded electricity or telephone failures anywhere along the network) to all other ISPs in the world.
Just as in flying, some Internet trips are direct, and some go through other locations.
Some Internet trips take longer, and others are very quick.
Where you're heading, some airports (or ISPs) are busier and have long delays at times.
Some may not even be open, sometimes (the ISP is 'down' temporarily), and unlike airports, ISPs are being upgraded, changed and moved around all the time.
Confused? Don't worry.
Your ISP is responsible for getting you off on your journey, any time you connect and ask to go somewhere else (asking for an address outside your ISP).
If you can connect (get to the airport), but can't get going anywhere else (get off the ground on your journey), then your ISP will offer 'travellers' aid' and help you sort out what is going on!
You are responsible for your own actions.
Your responsibility includes considerate behaviour towards other people on the 'Net, following instructions on how to connect and how to use programs, and investing the time to learn , bit by bit, how the programs and the systems work.
After all, you want to be an Internet user, not a luser.

mail server

An ISP provides a variety of services by allowing you to connect to specific computers and programs (servers).
A mail server is a specialized mail program, with an amount of space on a computer, which stores incoming mail until you pick it up, processes and sends outgoing mail, and checks that people are using the right address.
It's a computerized post-office.
The human being behind the 'post-office' is only emergency back-up for this and many other servers and pieces of equipment.
So you would normally email
postmaster@ your ISP (in my case, postmaster@riverland.net.au)
only if you had problems with that mailserver.
Learning to use your email program is your job:

read your email program's Help
check that your Internet settings (given to you on a printed sheet by your ISP when they first set you up) are correct
read the Look Here First information on this site
get good training if it's available
and if you get stuck, you're welcome to email me using the address at the bottom of this page (I like questions :-)

Internet

The 'Internet' literally means 'network between networks', but I also think of it as the International network.
In computer terms, a network is a way of joining computers together so they can share information.
Many schools, businesses etc. have their own internal networks (LAN - Local Area Network) where they have several computers linked together, and also linked to the same printer(s), scanner, camera, main computer (for storing files) or modem gateway (for connecting outside the internal network).
The more different things : computers, other pieces of hardware (printers etc.) and especially programs (software) are involved in a network, the more complicated it is.
This means (in theory) that you can do more things with all that equipment ... but it also means more things can go wrong!
With an internal network (LAN), you can see and touch the whole system; it's all in one room or building.
However, the Internet is made up of millions of computers all over the world, linked together 'permanently' (by the local and international phone system and by satellites) to share information.
An incredible range of software (different types of instructions) is used on all these different machines.
Millions more individual computers, like yours and mine, dial in and connect for minutes or hours at a time, sending and receiving mail, and crawling over this 'world wide web' (www) of public files, looking for information.
You, with your computer and modem, are the traveller.
Your ISP is the airport ... and the rest of the Internet is the vast, varied world beyond that airport.

formatting

Don't do it!
Formatting is making individual choices about your program, or about your document, which change its appearance or behaviour.
In word-processing, formatting includes changing the font, size, style and colour of text (words), using tabs (measured spaces) and generally setting out the document so it looks the way you want it to.
This is fine, because you're going to print it out and use it as 'hard copy' (on paper).
Email, however, is simple and quick because it is just plain text.
Some email programs now have features that let you make your message look pretty (rich text, styled text), include hyperlinks you can click on (html) or even include pictures in the message.
The great majority of email programs worldwide can only read, or are set to plain text, so any other guff in a message comes up on the screen as a lot of garbage characters, takes up too much space and slows the message down.
People hate it!
It is important to make sure that your email program is always set to plain text  (not  'rich text', 'styled text' or 'html'), out of consideration for the people who may receive your messages.
Check through your mail settings or preferences until you find this option — some mail 'parts' of browsers have a default setting  (they start out that way) of html, styled or rich text, which can make you very unpopular with the people receiving your mail!
Another common problem with email is attachments.
Although most email programs allow you to join (attach, enclose etc.) other files (documents, pictures, whole programs!) to your email message and send the bloated mass on its way, this clogs up the email system, and often the person at the other end doesn't have exactly the same software as you, and can't  decode the 'attachment'.
If you want to send a document (anything with writing), just highlight the writing that you want to send, then Copy it, then go into your email message and Paste it on the end or where you want it.
Yes, it will go as plain, ordinary text ... but everyone  will be able to read it, and it will go quickly  and with no problems  !
If you want to share a 'great program' or an 'exciting file' with someone, it is much easier just to tell them where on the Net to find it for themselves.

Contents

Writing an email message

You need:

an email program, set up properly with your own email address and Internet connection details
someone else's email address
something to say

Bare Bones

Open your email program.
In one of the menus at the top of the screen, you will find New Message or similar. Choose that.
A message window will open.
Who is this message from? You! Your own email address should already be in that box, put there by your email program.
Who is this message to? Type in the other person's email address (click in a box to start typing there).
What is this message about (the subject)? Type that in.
What do you want to say? Type that in the main box (the body).
Put the message away to be sent later when you connect (Queue or Send Later or similar); or if you are online now, Send Now.

Doing it Right

In your email program, go to Setup, Options, Preferences, Settings, Configuration (or whatever it calls the choices you make about how it does things).

Read the Help about your program.
Would you try to drive a vehicle without knowing what the important controls did?
Don't be a luser.

Now you understand what the different settings are about, fill in the information your program needs.
Your ISP will give you a printed sheet with the correct settings for connecting to their servers.
ISPs also have this information online (at the ISP's website), although that's not much use if you need the information in order to connect... :-)

While setting-up, your email program will ask for your own email address .
Make sure you fill it in, and make sure it is correct.
If you are not sure about your exact email address, check with your ISP.

A good email program will have an Address Book (or similar). Follow the instructions in the Help, entering in the Address Book the email addresses of people you know.
You will notice (in the Help) that when you receive a message from a person whose address is not yet in your Address Book, you can tell a good email program (using a menu command) to put the new email address in the Address Book for you!

Now you can tell your program to begin a New Message .
A good email program will allow you to choose to create a new message to one of the addresses in the list from your Address Book.
For example, in Eudora you simply go to the Message menu then slide down to New Message to... and a list of people's names pops out.
Choose the one you want.

A message window will open.
Your email program already knows your address (because you entered it in the settings) and you have already chosen the other person's address, so the message window already has both addresses, and you don't have to type them in.
This saves time, and is additionally useful because it is very easy to make mistakes trying to type in email addresses.
(Result? The message won't send, arrive or allow people to reply to you.)

What is your message about?
When the other person first receives your message, before opening it s/he will see your name, the date it was sent, and its subject.
If you want people to read your messages, keep your subject line brief and make sure it tells the person what you are going to be talking about.

If you are sending this message to more than one person , email programs offer you a CC (Carbon Copies) box in which to put those other addresses.
However, good email programs also offer you a BCC (Blind Carbon Copy) box.
Putting any additional addresses in the BCC box prevents spam robots from harvesting lists of addresses from your email.
Unless you are sure that somebody really wants to receive this message, do not send it to him or her at all.
Copying messages to other people is easy, and spammers use it to send out huge quantities of junk mail through the email system.
Spammers are lusers by definition, because they lose the respect of other Internet users the minute they send them unwanted email.
Think before you copy, and be a welcome (not 'Trashed the message and complained about that idiot to his/her ISP') emailer.

In the main message box (the body of the message), write whatever you want to say.
In a good email program, you can Save your message and come back to it later, even write it in stages if you like.
You can Save As your message, Saving it As a document somewhere on your computer, because you want to keep it.
You can Print messages out if you want to.

At the end of your message, you can leave your signature or 'sig'.
This should not be more than four lines long, and can include information about yourself, the address of your homepage, quirky quotations, little pictures made out of keyboard characters ... it's up to you.
Your email program will let you make a signature file, then save it so it appears at the end of each message.
Read the Help: good email programs give you options for different signatures, giving you a choice when you start a message.

Finished writing your message?
Then just tell your program to Queue or Send (Later) the message, to be sent next time you connect (to your ISP with your modem).
If for some reason you are online (connected) right now, you can Send (Now) .

Contents

Sending email

When you are connected to your ISP, and ask your email program to Check Mail, Send and Receive (or similar) it will also send any messages you have in your Out box which are queued and waiting to go.

However, sometimes you just want to send one or two messages, and not pick up all your mail waiting on the server (maybe there is a lot, maybe you want to pick it up from another computer, maybe you are in a hurry).

Anyway, if you just want to Send one or more messages, make sure you are connected to your ISP, then choose from the commands in your email program's menus Send Message, Send Queued Messages or similar.

Straight away, your email program should tell you that it is:

connecting to your ISP's mail server
sending the message(s) one by one
closing the connection to the mail server

If your email program is not able to complete step 1 (connect to your ISP's mail server), your modem may not be working properly, or you may not have entered the name of the mail server correctly in your email program's settings.

For more information on modem problems, see Why does my connection 'drop out' (disconnect) on me? on the FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) page on this site.

Your ISP will have given you a printed list of any connection settings (including server names, so you can access a service such as mail) which need to be entered into your Internet programs.
When you send mail from your computer to the mailserver, it travels using a process called the Simple Mail Transfer Protocol, so some ISPs have mailserver names starting with smtp.

Others simply call themselves mail, e.g.

mail.riverland.net.au.

Check that you are telling your email program the right place (SMTP server) to try and send your mail!

If you have not filled in the From, To and Subject boxes in a message, a good email program will usually warn you when you try to Queue or Send the message, and will give you another chance (we all forget sometimes!).

However, you can type in an email address that looks all right to the email program (has the right structure: user@ISPcomputer.organization.country) but is actually not a valid address currently belonging to anybody .
This email will 'bounce' back to you, with details about why it didn't work.
Read these carefully, and if you are confused about anything, email postmaster@yourISP or ring your ISP.
Don't Reply by email to that 'bounce' notice.
It is being sent automatically by the email program on the server, not by a person (however chatty it might sound, if the 'master copy' for the notices was originally written by a friendly postmaster).
Your reply to a 'bounce' will just have to be forwarded somewhere else by the mailserver, or will be ignored.

Another common problem with sending email ("I can send OK, I think, but nobody replies to me and says they got my email") is that you may not have entered your own reply-to email address correctly in your email program's settings.
Check this.
If your reply-to address is incorrect, people will be trying to email you, and their emails will be 'bounced' straight back to them.
Worse still, they might be going to a total stranger!
Your email address is your Internet identity.
Make sure it is correct.

Contents

Picking up email

Anytime you are online (connected by modem to your ISP), you can ask your email program to Check Mail .

Your email program then asks the mailserver at your ISP if any mail has come in for you since last time you checked, and if so, to send it straight to your computer via the modem.

There are two settings that can cause you trouble here:

your email program may have an option to "check your mail every (fill in the box) minutes" ...
if you are not online 24 hours a day, your email program will either dial out for you (and cost you that many phone calls and that much online time every day), or it will get its knickers in a knot trying to dial out manically every (that many) minutes.
Make sure this option (in your mail preferences or settings) is not selected.
You don't need it.
You can check your mail when you want!
your email program may also have an option to "leave mail on server".
This is only worth while if you are regularly using more than one computer for email (e.g. at work and at home) and know how to pick up mail from different computers, remembering to set one of them to "delete mail after (getting etc.)".
If you want to know how to do this, send me an email explaining what you want to be able to do, and for each computer involved: which email program you are using, what operating system (e.g. Windows, Macintosh, Unix) the computer uses, if it is connected to a network and if so, what kind, and what organization is providing the Internet Service.
Without that information, I'd be trying to make a cake without the ingredients!
It is a common, and pretty awful error to have your email program set to "leave mail on server", and thus have your email piling up on the ISP's mailserver months after you've read it ... a really good way NOT to get popular with the people who are there to help you!

These two odd settings notwithstanding, checking mail is a breeze:
while online (connected by modem to your ISP), open your email program if it's not already open, and from its menus choose Check Mail (or similar).

Immediately your email program will tell you it is:

connecting to the mailserver
checking your mail account (named with your email address)
downloading (this many) messages, one by one
then closing the connection

If your email program can't complete step 1, then your modem is not working (see the FAQ, as mentioned above), or you have entered the name of the mailserver incorrectly in your email program's settings.

When mail travels from the mailserver to your computer, it is following a process called the Post Office Protocol.
For that reason, some ISPs have mailservers with names that start with pop.
However, others simply call their mailserver mail, e.g.

mail@riverland.net.au

Check that you're telling your email program the right place (POP server) to find your mail!

If your email program can't complete step 3, you may have encountered another annoyingly common problem in downloading your mail from the server: email constipation.

This occurs when some well (or less well) meaning person sends you a very large file attached to an email message.

The average email message, as we have said, is only a few k (kilobytes: for more information on what these storage terms really mean, see glossary (part 2): information storage on this site) while a large document, program, picture or sound file may take up Mb (megabytes, thousands of times bigger ).

So the poor person being sent this unwieldy junk through the email system, sees some messages come through quickly and normally, perhaps, and then the system appears to 'get stuck' on the message towing the giant attachment.
Good email programs show you a progress bar (moving from empty to full) while a message is arriving, and you can see that bar moving fairly quickly.
When a message is towing something thousands of times its size, the progress bar may have to sit there for an hour or more (barely moving or not appearing to move at all), while the giant attachment trickles its way through the email system.

If you have an external modem (with Receive Data and Transmit Data lights), or a PPP (Point to Point Protocol) display program which shows you (with little wiggly bars like a stereo sound-measure) whether your connection is sending/receiving data or not, you can see whether that message is in fact still coming through (i.e. that data is still being received by your modem).

Often people don't check this fact, but panic, decide that something must be broken at the other end (e.g. the poor mailserver which is dutifully chugging this file through), give up and ring the ISP, saying "I can't download my mail".

If this blockage in your email is slowly coming through, you can simply wait for it to get there (all remaining messages will come through normally after that), then email a reply to the person who sent it, asking him or her not to do that again, explaining why, cutting and pasting in the information under formatting, further up this page, if you like.
Well-meaning people will not do it again.

If you do not have any way to check if data is moving through the modem, and if after a reasonable wait, the message does not appear to be coming through, you can ring your ISP and ask them to check your mailbox on the mailserver.
If in fact a large 'message' is blocking your mail-flow, you can ask them to delete it from your box.
Additionally (if you really want it, and they have the time), you can ask your ISP postmaster to compress that file and put it on a floppy disk (if it will fit) for you to come and pick up (you would need to pay a small fee for this).

The option to get help from your ISP to delete anything blocking your mail flow is particularly useful if the person sending the large message, or a very large number of unwanted messages (known as a 'mail bomb') is not well-meaning (in the case of a mail bomber, apparently barely sentient).

Your postmaster can help you with blockages in your email, but will do it with much more respect for you as a user, if you have checked out all the possibilities at your end, first.
This includes learning about your email program, and reading information like this and the spam page mentioned earlier (there is a lot of free self-help information on the Internet).

Contents

Sorting and reading email

to read an email message, double-click on it, and the message will open.

after you have read it, you can select Reply from the program menus, and start writing your answer (see also replying to email further on).

you can select (highlight) then Copy and Paste information out of it (into a New or other document), while it is open, but you can't usually change anything in it.

you can Save it As a document while it is open (emails may contain information which you want to keep).

you can Print it (if necessary) while it is open.

click on the close box in the corner, and it will close again.

in a mailbox, click on a closed message's name once, to select it (if it's not already highlighted), if you are going to Move/Transfer it into a different mailbox or Trash it.

Well, you've got your first mail!
Congratulations on doing the work to get your program set up properly
(and on remembering to have the modem plugged in when you try to connect! You haven't forgotten that one yet? We all have, at some time or another :-)
It's fun to get occasional email at first, but like your snailmail (that paper stuff people send you), it means you are connected to a worldwide system, and may end up with a crowded In box!

Your email program starts you off with an In box, an Out box, and a Trash (otherwise known as 'the circular file': not just a round-shaped bin, but a way of recycling the space on your computer).

Email boxes are easiest to manage if you deal with email messages as they come in .
Remember, your best friend in the paperless jungle ... is the Trash!

As email messages come in, you can decide what basic category they fit in, and deal with them (so they don't clutter up your In box and get in your way).
Here are some examples of how messages can fit into these categories:

the skim-and-trash message...
Netscape (or someone else with whom I have had contact before) telling me about business opportunities which do not interest me: Trash
the one-action message...
so-and-so has changed his/her email address (better put it in the Address Book now, before trashing the message)
OR
there's an interesting link (hyperlink, URL, Internet webpage address) in this message (will check it out now online with my web browser, or put it in my Bookmarks/Favorites there so I can check it out later; then trash the message)
the multi-action message...
this message has several interesting links in it, can't look at them all now, will Save it As a document, call it "NewLinks", saving it onto my desktop (so I can check these links out as I get the time online), then trash the message
OR
this message has information about upcoming meetings (put the info in my organizer before I forget, or Save this message As a document on my desktop, call it MEETINGS so I can't miss it, and put the info in my organizer RSN [real soon now!]), then trash the message
the solid-info message...
this message has a whole article or amount of information which I need to Save As a document, naming it so I can find it easily, and putting it in a folder that makes sense (e.g. not putting DOGS in the CATS folder, but creating a new ANIMALS folder for both of them) -- you will want to save a lot of information from email or off webpages, and then be able to find it again, so it's important to name files sensibly and keep the folders on your hard drive well-organized, just as you would the files and folders in a filing cabinet.
unwanted commercial/bulk email (SPAM) message...
this is a message from someone you do not know, and which you did not ask to be sent, but you have paid to download this junkmail.
It ranges from the annoying marketing schemes, through the chain-letter hoaxes, to the obscene.
It can be stopped, and is becoming illegal.
See Spam - how to deal with it on this site.

The main reasons for dealing with email as it comes in (not leaving it in the In box) are:

your In box gets very cluttered (like a desk!), so it's easier to manage the information coming in, if you get organized
email programs, like any software, can become corrupted (damaged) by system crashes or power 'outages' -- and your whole In box is one computer file, with all the messages joined together.
You can reinstall your email program from scratch, but if the In box (or any other box) file is damaged, you have lost all those messages.

NOTE: it is possible to retrieve bits and pieces of information from a damaged file or disk, but it is a specialized, and therefore expensive process!
BACK UP (copy onto another disk, so you have two copies in existence) anything you would seriously not want to lose.

See these TidBits articles if you need to set up an everyday, reliable backup system

SAVE as you go, when you are working.
All right, I'm down off the soapbox for now :-)

A good email program also helps you keep your mail organized, by allowing you to create additional mailboxes and filters.

If you join a mailing list, you may have a lot of messages coming in regularly on a particular topic.

Joining a mailing list means that you subscribe to a specialized mailserver which sends you and everyone else on the subscriber list all the messages on that topic of interest -- you can participate by posting your own messages, or just 'lurk', only read others' messages.

A good email program will allow you to create a filter, which is an instruction to take a particular action with a message that is 'from this address', 'has this subject' etc.
Read the Help thoroughly about filters.
They are easy to use, but not with your eyes closed!

For example,

you could filter all messages from joeblow@there.com into a New mailbox called "Joe's messages"

you could filter all messages with "dog" in the subject line into a New mailbox called "Dogs"

you could filter all messages from a particular mailing list into a New mailbox named for the list

and you could filter all messages you write to a particular person or about a particular topic, into a New mailbox named for that reason.

useful tips

when selecting (highlighting) a message to Move/Transfer it into another box or into the Trash, you can select more than one message at a time (check the Help for this, as it varies between programs).
Holding down the Shift key as you press on the other message(s) is a common method.

a good email program has a menu command to Empty Trash whenever you're ready

double-clicking on a message will open it so you can read it, but once you've read it, some programs then allow you to open the next message in the box by pressing the Space Bar.
If the message is longer than one screen-full, press the Space Bar until you read to the end, then press it again.
As you finish one message, pressing the Space Bar will close it and open the next one.
Some mail programs (such as Cyberdog's mail part), will allow you to hold down the Option key with the Space Bar as you finish a message, and that will not only move you on to the next message, but will also delete the previous one!

within each mailbox, a good email program will allow you to Sort the messages by date (oldest at the top) or in alphabetical order of the sender or subject.
This can be handy for finding the most recent messages, and for finding messages which are all from the same person, or about the same thing.

your email program should also have a Find command in the menus, which will help you search for particular messages (by words in the subject, by the sender and even by words in the body of the message)

sometimes you will want to Forward (Fwd) a message to someone else who is interested, or perhaps to your other email address if you have more than one (and want to look at that message later in another place).
When you select Forward from the menu (in good email programs, you can Forward To the person you choose from the list provided by the Address Book), a new message window will open, with the message already quoted (not between "talking marks", but with > before each line, like this:) >what the other person said Do yourself, the recipient and the whole mail system a favour by highlighting and deleting any text that is not really needed by the person receiving the forwarded message.

you can also Copy bits of information out of an email message which you are reading, and then Paste them into a new or existing email or word-processing document.

Contents

Replying to email

When you are reading a message to which you want to reply, just choose Reply from the menus.

A new message window, already set up with your email address and the reply-to address of the person who sent you the message you were reading, will open.

There are three things you can do, to be more efficient and considerate in replying:

the subject line will not have changed from the original message, except for a "Re:" in front of it.
This can go on and on, when people are emailing back and forth, with lots of "Re:"s and a subject that becomes way out of date!
Make sure your subject reflects what you are talking about in your message.

a good email program will quote everything said in the original message, mostly because it's only a piece of software and doesn't know which bits of the message you are actually going to need in your reply.
If you select (highlight) only the part of the incoming message which you really need in your own reply message, your program should only quote that part in the reply, and you won't end up with long and complicated emails.
Any recipient of your email will thank you for that! :-)

of course, in your own message (whether it's a reply or a new message) you can change anything you like.
Therefore, you can save space and confusion by highlighting and deleting bits and pieces of the message that really don't need to be there.
You can also leave one line ("white space" that helps the eye read more easily) between what the other person said (the quoted text), like this: > what the other person said and what you are saying in reply.

When you have finished writing your reply, you then Queue it or tell the program to Send Later , and your reply will sit in your Out box until you get online (connect to your ISP with your modem) and send it, along with any others waiting there.
You can still go back to that message (whether it's a reply or a new message) and reopen it, if you want to change it, as long as you haven't sent it yet!

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What do all the symbols mean?

Programs save space on the screen (and sometimes annoy and confuse the user) by using little pictures (icons or symbols) in place of words.
These vary enough to be confusing, between different programs.

However, your email program will have symbols like these that show if a message:

o is waiting to be read (unread)
has been read (usually no symbol)
R has been Replied to
Q is waiting to be sent (Queued)
S has been Sent
F has been Forwarded as a copy to somebody else

The Help will explain what any other symbols in the message window mean.
They are meant to be useful, so it's worth finding out!

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So what is "a good email program"?

It's an email program that makes it easy for you to do what you want.

Generally, I recommend Eudora (at www.eudora.com) for both Windows and Macintosh platforms.
It is very reliable and easy to use, with all the features you need, and it is free.
It comes with an excellent Help menu that shows you how to do the various steps of emailing, and also with a complete Manual which you can read and use on your computer.
www.eudora.com has a lot of useful information and links to excellent Eudora-help sites.
I include links to two helpful online tutorial sites for Eudora, below.

Also, since so many people use Eudora, it's not difficult to swap mailboxes around from one computer to another, or to ask questions of other users.

A Guide to the Eudora Mail Package (from the Uni of SA, Adelaide)
and
Internet 101: Eudora Tutorial (from the USA)

Email for the Macintosh platform is also beautifully handled by the intuitive Internet suite Cyberdog
(the program's available free on the OS8 CD or from the TUCOWS software site at Ballarat, under 'Macintosh' software, and then 'Browsers').
Whether you're a long-term MacUser or are part of the great iMac rush, check out the 'Dog.

It's certainly my best friend, and I'm happy to answer email queries about it :-)

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clytie@riverland.net.au

back to 'Look Here First'

o	is waiting to be read (unread)
	has been read (usually no symbol)
R	has been Replied to
Q	is waiting to be sent (Queued)
S	has been Sent
F	has been Forwarded as a copy to somebody else