E-mail or electronic mail is one of the more popular uses of the Internet. It is developing its own language and its own set of rules. Remember we talked about the unwritten rules of the workplace? Well, e-mail systems also have unwritten rules.
If you write a message in caps like HELLO, it means that you are shouting at the other person or people! These kinds of rules are called netiquette. Etiquette is what we call social rules about manners and polite behaviour. Netiquette means the same, only it relates to how we communicate in e-mails.
There are also lots of acronyms, nicknames and abbreviations that are used. These are a few of the more common ones:
Addresses on the Internet are just like those we put on envelopes to send "snail mail". For a letter to reach its destination, the complete address is needed on the enveloppe. E-mail addresses include something that refers to the person, @ and the server (the company providing the service). An e-mail address might look like name@interlog.com. Notice that the address is in lower caps. This is important to pay attention to!
When do you think you would use e-mail and when do you think you would use snail mail? Why do you think the term snail mail was invented?
Sometimes when you are looking for information, and you want to know the source, you can look at the web address (web addresses are very different from e-mail addresses. But it is equally important to get it exactly right.
With all this access to information, what kind of skills do we need to develop?
| Skill | Why we need it and how we would use it |
|---|---|