“Neither rain nor sleet nor gloom of night shall keep the carriers from their appointed rounds.”
No matter how romantic that sounds, mail delivery via the postal service often lives up to its new name: “snail mail.” Not only does e-mail (electronic mail) arrive anywhere in the world within the blink of an eye, but you can also send as many e-mails as you want, and it’s included in the cost of your Internet connection. Pretty impressive.
An e-mail you write to your daughter goes on quite a journey before it arrives on her computer screen, and yet amazingly it all happens in seconds. Here’s how it works:
You write the e-mail and send it to your daughter. Your e-mail service routes the e-mail to a central brain for the Internet. That brain reads the e-mail address and routes it to your daughter’s e-mail service. Her e-mail service holds it until she signs on. When your daughter signs on, any e-mail sent to her (including yours) will arrive in her mailbox, referred to as the “Inbox.” She then reads the e-mail, replies to you, and the cycle continues.
Again, recipients do not have to be home or have their computer on for you to send them e-mail. Their e-mail service keeps it until they sign on.
If you’ve chosen to skip over Chapter 13 and come straight here to send an e-mail, please go back and read the previous chapter. It is full of helpful information for you to use while on the Internet.
If you didn’t sign onto an e-mail account with your Internet Service Provider, you’ll want to establish an e-mail account now. There are free web-based e-mail services. That means you can get on any computer in the world that is connected to the Internet and access e-mail from these sites. The three I would look into are yahoo.com, gmail.com, and hotmail.com. When you visit the website, click on the words “sign up” and fill out the necessary form to open an e-mail account. (Revisit page 170 for advice about how to choose a user name for your e-mail address.) Again, don’t hesitate to ask a friend or relative to help you, if you want someone by your side through the process.
“Letter writing had become a lost art form. I missed it. Now with e-mail I am writing more and loving it!”
—Alida
Your e-mail address is your user name (what you sign on with) plus the e-mail service address. For example, if Brendan is my user name and Yahoo is the e-mail service, then my e-mail address is Brendan@yahoo.com.
Brendan is the user name.
@ means “at.”
yahoo.com is the domain name or mailing address. It could have been aol.com, hotmail.com, gmail.com, or whatever entity handles my e-mail.
When people tell you their e-mail address, repeat it back to them. Better yet, get them to write it down. One error in letter, number, or punctuation and your e-mail could be sent to someone else. Be sure not to type in Brendanatyahoo.com. “At” is represented by holding down the Shift key and depressing the 2 key—@ will then appear; “dot” is another way to say “period.”
Sign on to your e-mail service. When you’ve connected to your e-mail provider, look around for what you click on to write an e-mail. You should have options along the lines of Compose, Create, New, or Write. Click on whichever you have. Each service is different, but they all have someplace to click to generate an e-mail template.
• Sample inboxes for Gmail and Yahoo.
An e-mail form is now on your screen, ready and waiting to be filled in. It should look something like the template on the following page.
• Generating an e-mail template is different, but straightforward, for each e-mail service.
• A Yahoo e-mail template. The recipient’s e-mail address is typed in the “To:” box and your message is typed in the large text box below it.
CLICK AND GO
1. Click in To:, type recipient’s e-mail address.
2. Click in Subject:, type the topic of your e-mail.
3. Click in Text Box, type your missive.
4. Click on Send.
You’re going to send your first e-mail to yourself. Again, each e-mail service is slightly different, but here are the basic steps:
• There should be a flashing vertical line (referred to as the cursor or blinking cursor) in the left corner of the To: text box. If there isn’t, move the mouse arrow into that box and click once.
• Type the recipient’s e-mail address in the To: box. (In this case, because you are sending it to yourself, type in your e-mail address.) Look at it and be sure there are no mistakes. Hit Tab to move to the cursor to the Subject: box or click in the Subject box with the mouse to activate it.
• Type something in the Subject: box, even if it is only “Hello.” Some services won’t let you send an e-mail without a subject. The purpose of the subject box is to give the recipient a sense of the contents so they can prioritize which e-mails to open first.
• Now either move the mouse into the large text area and click or hit Tab again. This is where you’ll type your message.
Before we type a message, I’ll explain a couple of things. One of the big differences when you’re typing on a computer as opposed to on a typewriter is that you don’t need to hit Enter or Return at the end of a line. The text automatically moves, or wraps around, to the next line.
You do, however, need to use the Return or Enter key to create a new paragraph or to insert a blank line between text. (The Tab key is still used to indent a paragraph.)
Now we get to type a message.
• Type in whatever you would like to say. For example,
Mirror, mirror on the wall, who is playing with the computer and having a ball?
• When you’re done, move the mouse arrow onto the word Send or Send Now, and click once.
• Some e-mail services ask that you acknowledge that the e-mail was sent. If this is the case, move the mouse arrow onto the word OK and click.
And away it goes!
Your e-mail provider keeps a copy of your sent mail for you. If you want to see the message you sent, look for a button with the word Sent, Sent Mail, or Outbox.
If the service is very busy, it might take a few minutes for the e-mail to arrive, but generally it should be in your Inbox or mailbox almost instantaneously. There are several ways to retrieve mail, depending on which e-mail service you use.
• An example of e-mail correspondence.
Move the mouse arrow down to either Read Mail, Get New Mail, Get Messages, Check Mail, or Mail, and click. Your inbox or mailbox should appear on the screen.
Your new unread mail may be in bold or have some other indication that it hasn’t been read. To open it, double-click on it or single-click on the mail to highlight it, and then click on Read, or single-click on either the sender’s name or the subject of the e-mail received. Each e-mail service is different. Your mouse arrow changing to a hand will help lead you to where to click.
Voilà, the note you sent yourself!
Let’s print your new e-mail! Is the printer plugged in and turned on? Either click on the Printer icon in the Toolbar or move the mouse arrow to the word File, click, and then move the mouse arrow down to the word Print and click. When the Print window appears, hit Enter, Return, or click on Print or OK. Also be on the lookout for the words “Printer Friendly” above (or maybe to the right of) the e-mail. If you see “Printer Friendly,” click there to print a copy of the e-mail. Mission accomplished!
You cannot send an anonymous e-mail. The sender’s address will always appear on the e-mail. As a matter of fact, with some services the whole routing path will appear. (That is the indecipherable code at the top or bottom of your e-mail.)
To reply to the sender (in this case, yourself), click once on Reply, Reply to Sender (this will send the return e-mail to the sender only), or Reply to Everyone(this will send the return e-mail to everyone who received the initial e-mail). Each service is a little different, but you’ll find the reply button easily.
“I love that I can e-mail at any time. I am often awake in the middle of the night and I would never think to call my girls at that time. When it happens now, I just sit at the computer and write them an e-mail.”
—Ed
Look what happened when you hit the Reply button! How convenient—an e-mail is all set up with the sender’s (soon to be recipient’s) e-mail address in the To: box. Now you can take it from here. Perhaps you want to try sending another e-mail to yourself. Better yet, do you have someone else’s e-mail address? If you don’t have anyone’s e-mail address on hand, it would be my pleasure to receive an e-mail from you. My e-mail address is abby@abbyandme.com.
An e-mail you receive can be passed on to others. To do this, click on the button that is labeled Forward or Forward Message in the open e-mail that you received. The e-mail you got is now ready for you to forward. Click on the To: box and type in the e-mail address of the person you want to send it to. You can also type a message in the large text box if you want. Click on the text box and type away. When you’re ready, simply click on the Send button to send both messages as one e-mail. But, what if you wanted to only send one part of the e-mail received and not the entire thing? You can. You and I will go over that and other more advanced e-mail activities in Chapter 17.
Every e-mail service has an address book where you can store the e-mail addresses of people that you will correspond with frequently. As each e-mail service is different, I can’t tell you exactly where to find your address book, but I can give you some clues… Does the word Address or Contacts appear in the window? If so, click on it. If not, go to the Menu Bar. Is the word Mail in the Menu Bar? If so, click on that and see if you might find the address book there. When the address book appears on the screen, be extremely accurate when entering e-mail addresses. The last thing you want is to store a wrong address.
Once you’ve put an e-mail address in the book, try sending an e-mail (you can start with mine, abby@abbyandme.com, if you don’t have any others). You can either generate a new e-mail form when you have your address book open or you can open a new e-mail form and then access the address book from there. In either case, you must click on the address in the book and then click on either To: or Send Mail. Some services then ask you to click on OK to confirm your choice.
The real advantage of the address book is that you don’t need to remember or keep typing e-mail addresses. This is handy because it’s easy to make a mistake in even a short e-mail address, and just one wrong letter means your missive won’t arrive.
Again, there are several ways to delete old mail, depending on which service you use. When e-mail is open or even just highlighted, there might be a button with an X on it (not to be mistaken for the Close Box) or the word Delete. Click on whatever your service offers as a way to throw away read mail. It is wise to delete mail you don’t need, to keep things nice and tidy.
“I love e-mail. The only thing I don’t love is getting all of those silly jokes. I wish I could ask my friends to stop, but I don’t want to be rude.”
—Virginia
E-mail is generally more casual than letter writing, but for some, e-mail’s code of conduct is right up there with the rules of how to behave at a wedding or which fork to use at dinner. Here are some guidelines on “netiquette.” Take what you want and leave the rest behind.
1. Generally you should respond to most e-mails received, even if it’s only to acknowledge that you got the message. Unless, of course, it is an unwanted solicitation—I delete these immediately.
2. Be selective about what you forward. Forwarding silly jokes you receive can be a bother for the recipient (ask if he or she wants them). Chances are, this isn’t the first time these jokes have gone’round the circuit.
3. DON’T SHOUT! When you type in all caps, it is the equivalent of shouting at someone.
4. If you send an e-mail to multiple recipients, unless you use Bcc:, you’re revealing the e-mail addresses of all the recipients. Some people prefer to keep their e-mail addresses under wraps. Ask before you release them into the world.
5. Be prepared to read e-mails without capital letters, a proper greeting, and creative grammar and punctuation. This is a very casual form of communication where you and others may take liberties with what Emily Post and your English teacher instructed.
6. Before you forward anything, try to clean it up by deleting all the gobbledegook that you may find at the beginning and end of the e-mail. Sometimes the list of who has seen the e-mail is longer than the message.
Again, when you join me in Chapter 17 we’ll go into more detail about responsibly sending on part of an e-mail you’ve received.
Eventually your e-mail address will get on someone’s mailing list. Sad to say, even the Internet has junk mail. I delete junk mail right away. You can reply to the sender that you want to be taken off the mailing list, but I wouldn’t hold my breath. We discuss how to manage junk mail (also called spam) in more detail in Chapter 16.
Click on and read all the different parts of your e-mail system. You know how to get yourself out of an area that doesn’t appeal to you. (Hint: Close Box!)
I have complete faith in your ability to dig deep into what your e-mail service and the Internet have to offer you. You have all the tools at your disposal. Be brave and strike out on your own.
Q: Can I spell-check e-mail before sending?
A: Most e-mail services offer spell check. Look carefully at your e-mail template and see if you can’t find Check Spelling, Spell Check, or. Spell check may also appear in Tools. Try clicking there as well.
Q: Why do some e-mails get sent before I am ready?
A: Chances are you clicked on Send by accident. To prevent an e-mail from being sent prematurely, don’t put the recipient’s address in the To: box until you’ve completed the e-mail. An e-mail can’t be sent if there’s no e-mail address in the To: box.
Q: How can I correct an e-mail address after writing a long message?
A: Nothing you draft in an e-mail is set in stone until you click Send. To correct an e-mail address, click on the existing address and make any changes you want.
Q: Once I have clicked Send can I get an e-mail I’ve sent back?
A: Unfortunately, once you hit Send the e-mail is on its way to the recipient. That’s why it’s a good idea to move the mouse away from the word Send when typing an e-mail so you don’t accidentally click on it.
