Person-to-Person Communication with E-Mail

Chapter Six

Person-to-Person Communication with E-Mail

Now that you know all the elements that make up a good e-mail message, you're ready to actually get online and communicate. Once you're aware of the different elements of e-mail and have an easy-to-use e-mail client on your computer, using e-mail should be a breeze.

In this lesson, you can find the answers to the following questions:

• How do I send a basic e-mail message?
• How do I retrieve and read e-mail messages?
• How do I reply to e-mail messages?
• How do I forward an e-mail message to someone else?
• What else can I do with an e-mail message?
• What can I do to make sure that my message is easy for others to read?

You can easily find several good e-mail programs. Some Internet service providers, such as America Online, provide you with their own software for you to read e-mail. Many ISPs, however, either provide you with a third-party e-mail client or expect you to provide one of your own.

Far and away, the most popular e-mail program, which is used for all examples in this lesson, is Eudora. You can download a freeware version from ftp://ftp.qualcomm.com/Eudora/windows//1.5/eudor154.exe for PCs or ftp://ftp.qualcomm.com/quest/mac/Eudora/1.5/eudora154.hqx (or eudora154fat.hqx for PowerMacs) for Macintosh computers (refer to Lesson 17, "Getting Files with FTP," for more details on using FTP). Even if you don't use Eudora, your e-mail client probably uses many of the same features Eudora does.

Sending, Checking, and Reading E-Mail

Suppose you were to hire someone to retrieve your mail for you every day. What would you have to tell that person? Well, you would need to tell him or her who you are and where your mailbox is located, as well as where you would like your mail delivered in your house.

Your e-mail client works much like this person would. Your client gets your e-mail for you so that you can then read it, reply to it, file it, throw it away, or do anything else you want with it. This lesson covers all these elements, but you should start with the basics first.

Configuring Your E-Mail Client

Often, ISPs give you your e-mail client software already configured with the information you need to get going. If this is the case, you can skip this section. If you need to tell your e-mail client who you are (or even if you're just curious), however, read on.

Most e-mail clients need some basic information about you and your e-mail account before you can retrieve your mail. In Eudora, you can access your configuration settings by choosing Tools|Options (or Special|Settings on a Mac). In the resulting window, the following settings are organized by area.

Tools|Options|Getting Started

• Real Name: This setting provides your real name so that recipients of your messages will know who you are, much like a return address label on an envelope does.
• E-Mail Address: In this field, you enter your actual e-mail address. Eudora uses the term POP account. The POP account for Tom who works at the Candlestick Company, for example, might be tom@candlestick.com.

New Term: POP: This term stands for Post Office Protocol, which is the technical name for the way some e-mail servers deliver your mail.

Tools|Options|Personal Information

• Return Address: Most e-mail clients also require a return address, which in almost all cases is the same as your e-mail or POP account address. Figure 6.1 shows the Eudora Personal Information settings properly filled in.

Figure 6.1.

The personal information is probably among the most critical for your e-mail client.

Tools|Options|Hosts

• SMTP Server: This setting is the domain portion of your e-mail address in most cases. In the previous example, candlestick.com would be a likely SMTP server for tom@candlestick.com. Your e-mail provider should tell you the name of your SMTP server when you set up your account.

New Term: SMTP: This term stands for Simple Mail Transport Protocol, which is another technical name for the way e-mail messages are sent on the Internet. This represents the "language" or protocol used so that e-mail clients and servers can talk to each other.

After you enter all this information, you can click OK and then use your e-mail account to your heart's content.

Sending a Message

Before you can start reading e-mail, actually having something to read would be good! If you have already told several of your "connected" friends your e-mail address before looking at this lesson, perhaps you already have some messages to read. If you don't (or even if you do), sending a few messages out anyway might be a good idea.

To be safe, you should send an e-mail message to yourself first. This exercise serves two purposes. First, if you make a mistake, you'll be the only one who knows it. Second, if the process does work, you'll have at least one e-mail message to read for the next section.

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Just A Minute: You can access most of the common e-mail functions, such as sending, deleting, printing, replying to, and forwarding mail, from an easy-to-use toolbar at the top of your Eudora window. Simply put your cursor over each button, and a description of what it does automagically appears.

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To Do: Sending an E-Mail Message to Yourself

1. Make sure that you are connected to the Internet.

2. Choose Message|New Message.

3. Put your e-mail address in the To: field, and press the Tab key or click in the next field to proceed.

4. Enter a subject for your message in the Subject: field, and press the Tab key several times until your cursor is blinking in the body of the message.

5. Type in a short message.

6. After your screen looks something like the one shown in Figure 6.2, click the Send button to mail your message to yourself.

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Time Saver: In Figure 6.2, notice that the recipient's entire e-mail address isn't filled in. That's because Eudora and many other e-mail clients assume you're sending to a recipient in the same domain you're working in if you don't specify a full address. This knowledge can save you a few keystrokes.

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You've just sent your first e-mail message. Want to see what it says (as if you don't already know)? Read on.

Figure 6.2.

Don't feel weird. Everybody sends mail to himself or herself once in a while!

Checking Your Mail

Now that you know you have at least one message to read, you're ready to find out how. Make sure that you're still connected and follow these easy steps next.

To Do: Reading E-Mail Messages

1. Choose File|Check Mail. A window appears, prompting you for your password (though this prompt may appear when you first start up Eudora).

2. Type in your password, and click OK or press Enter. When your new mail is downloaded, a dialog box appears, telling you that new mail has arrived.

3. Press Enter. Your new mail then shows up in your In mailbox. Figure 6.3 shows the contents of a typical mailbox.

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Time Saver: Make sure that Caps Lock is turned off before entering your password. Because most passwords are case sensitive (in other words, sensitive to whether the letters you use are capitalized or lowercase), having Caps Lock turned on could cause you to receive an "incorrect password" error message.

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Figure 6.3.

This electronic "envelope" gives you information about messages in your mailbox.

Notice that the message is presented on one line with various pieces of header information included. With most e-mail clients, this "envelope" includes the sender's name or e-mail address, the time the message was sent, and the subject of the message, as well as other information.

Reading Your Mail

If you thought sending and checking your mail was easy, you ain't seen nothin' yet. To read a message, simply double-click it. That's it. The message pops up on your screen for you to read. When you're done reading it, simply click the close box.

If you have more than one message in your mailbox, you also can use your up- and down-arrow keys to navigate your messages. When the message you want to read is highlighted, you can press Enter as an alternative to double-clicking to open the message.

Replying to and Forwarding Messages

With Eudora, like most e-mail clients, you can reply to and forward messages by simply clicking a toolbar button. You then see a window that looks almost identical to the New Message window. It does have a few differences, though, as you will soon see.

Replying

In the ultimate exercise of cyber-schizophrenia, go ahead and reply to the message you just sent yourself. You do so by choosing Message|Reply or by clicking the Reply button on the toolbar.

In the resulting window, you see both your and the recipient's e-mail address already filled in for you. Also notice that the entire content of the original message appears in the body of the message, with each line preceded with an include mark.

New Term: Include marks: These > characters are the quotation marks of the Internet. When you're reading or replying to an e-mail message, an include mark indicates a line of text that belonged to a previous message.

Why are these include marks here? The biggest reason is for you to lend context to your messages. First, you must realize that your e-mail client acts like a word processor while you are editing the body of the message you want to send. You therefore can select, cut, copy, paste, or type any text you want.

By using these editing techniques, you can "include" pieces of the message to which you're replying so that it's easier to read and understand. Find out more about how to use these techniques effectively in the section titled "The Easy-to-Read E-Mail Message" later in this lesson. For now, look at the sample message reply shown in Figure 6.4.

Figure 6.4.

A good reply generally includes portions of the original message to provide context.

Forwarding

When you have something good, being able to share it with someone is nice. E-mail enables you to do so with ease using the message forwarding feature.

To forward a highlighted message, choose Message|Forward or click the Forward button on the toolbar. You then see a window almost identical to the Message Reply window, except that the To: field isn't filled in for you.

A forwarded message, like a reply, cites the original message with include marks. Also as you can with a message reply, you can edit the message any way you like, although many people forward messages without any comments except for a possible "thought you might be interested in this" at the top of the message body, as you can see in Figure 6.5.

Figure 6.5.

Many people like to pass on a good joke to their friends.

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Time Saver: If you want to forward a message to someone else without all the include marks, simply choose Message|Redirect instead. This way, you can redirect a message without include marks to the recipient of your choice.

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Other E-Mail Tasks

Of course, you can do many other things with e-mail messages. What you've learned so far covers about 75 percent of what you'll use e-mail for. Many of the advanced e-mail functions you'll need are covered in the next lesson.

You should know a couple other simple functions and shortcuts, however:

• Deleting mail: To delete a highlighted message, choose Transfer|Trash or Message|Delete. You also can click the Trash icon. Because this action only transfers your mail to your Trash mailbox, you also need to choose Special|Empty Trash to get rid of your messages for good.
• Printing mail: To print a highlighted message, choose File|Print or click the Print toolbar button.
• Saving mail: If you want to save an e-mail message as a non-mail text file, choose File|Save As.

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Time Saver: Deal with it! Your e-mail, that is. When you get a message, read it and then reply, save, transfer, or do whatever you want with it when you get it. Putting off dealing with e-mail is easy. If you're an electronic procrastinator, though, your only reward will be a cluttered, outdated, and confusing mailbox.

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The Easy-to-Read E-Mail Message

Follow these simple rules for creating an easy-to-read e-mail message, and you'll win friends and influence people:

• Cite the original message when you respond. Don't assume that the other person has any idea of what you're talking about. Quote the original message so that both of you know what's being said. Context is everything.
• Don't cite too much. Cut out material that isn't relevant to your reply. Much of knowing what to cut comes with experience, but always ask yourself if the original text you're including really adds context to your reply.
• Quote the original first. Citing an original message after your own comments is poor form. Often, people need to be reminded of what they said and to what you are replying. So quote the original message before your reply. After all, that's how normal conversation works (unless you're psychic!).
• Don't reply if a response isn't necessary. Nobody likes to receive several pages of an original message with a "me too" appended to the end.
• Space out. The text, not you. Always leave at least one blank line between included text and your reply. This way, you make the message easy on the eyes.

Figure 6.6 shows an e-mail reply that is properly edited and composed. Notice how easy to read the format is. By the way, after reading the message in this example, aren't you glad you don't have to deal with e-mail in UNIX?

Figure 6.6.

Though the content might look like Greek, the form is easy-to-read English.

Summary

In this lesson, you learned how to configure your e-mail client to use your account effectively. You also found out how to send, retrieve, and read your e-mail. In addition, you learned how to reply to and forward a message.

After learning all these basics, you found out how to complete some miscellaneous e-mail tasks such as deleting and printing messages. Finally, you examined some rules to help you properly reply to and forward a message with consideration for your reader.

Workshop

The following workshop helps solidify the skills that you learned in this lesson.

Q&A

Q I've seen some forwarded messages that indent and separate the original message instead of using include marks. Is this okay?

A Include marks are a universal symbol of citation and are less likely to confuse your reader. E-mail correspondence is about communication. Err on the side of clarity, and use the include marks.

Q I've heard that Eudora has some neat features like message filtering and spell checking. But I don't see those functions in Eudora Lite. What's up?

A Remember, you're using the freeware version of Eudora. If you want to purchase the commercial version of Eudora, Eudora Pro, choose Help|About Eudora Pro|Request More Info, and Qualcomm will send you information on how to get the "beefed-up" version. Remember, though, for most of your tasks, Eudora Lite works very well.

Quiz

Take the following quiz to see how much you've learned.

Questions

1. Which of the following is the likely SMTP server for bobw@late.night.org?

(a) bobw@late.night.org

(b) bobw

(c) late.night.org

2. Where should you put quoted text in a message reply?

(a) At the end of the message

(b) Just before your reply text

(c) Just after your reply text

3. Including the entire message you're replying to is always a good idea so that the person receiving it will know exactly what you're replying to.

(a) True

(b) False

Answers

1. (c) late.night.org

2. (c) Always cite the original message first before your reply, just as you would in normal conversation.

3. (b) False. Include only what's necessary.

Activity

Practice makes perfect. Your activity for this lesson is simple: Send some e-mail! Find some friends or family with e-mail addresses, and let them know you're alive. You can even send me a message letting me know you (hopefully) liked my guide if you want. After all, another 20,000 messages in my mailbox won't make a difference, right?