Basics of E-Mail

Email

Email is a service which allows us to send the message in electronic mode over the internet. It offers an efficient, inexpensive and real time mean of distributing information among people.

E-Mail Address

Each user of email is assigned a unique name for his email account. This name is known as E-mail address. Different users can send and receive messages according to the e-mail address.

E-mail is generally of the form username@domainname. For example, name@gmail.com is an e-mail address where name is username and gmail.com is domain name.

E-mail addresses are not case sensitive.

They cannot have spaces.

E-mail Message Components

E-mail message comprises of different components: E-mail Header, Greeting, Text, and Signature. These components are described in the following diagram:

E-mail Header

The first five lines of an E-mail message is called E-mail header. The header part comprises of following fields:

• From
• Date
• To
• Subject
• CC
• BCC

From

The From field indicates the sender’s address i.e. who sent the e-mail.

Date

The Date field indicates the date when the e-mail was sent.

To

The To field indicates the recipient’s address i.e. to whom the e-mail is sent.

Subject

The Subject field indicates the purpose of e-mail. It should be precise and to the point.

CC

CC stands for Carbon copy. It includes those recipient addresses whom we want to keep informed but not exactly the intended recipient.

BCC

BCC stands for Black Carbon Copy. It is used when we do not want one or more of the recipients to know that someone else was copied on the message.

Greeting

Greeting is the opening of the actual message. Eg. Hi Sir or Hi Guys etc.

Text

It represents the actual content of the message.

Signature

This is the final part of an e-mail message. It includes Name of Sender, Address, and Contact Number.

Advantages

E-mail has proved to be powerful and reliable medium of communication. Here are the benefits of E-mail:

• Reliable
• Convenience
• Speed
• Inexpensive
• Printable
• Global
• Generality

Disadvantages

Apart from several benefits of E-mail, there also exists some disadvantages as discussed below:

• Forgery
• Overload
• Misdirection
• Junk
• No response