THE BASICS


Electronic mail, or e-mail, is your personal connection to the world of 
the Net. 

All of the millions of people around the world who use the Net have their 
own e-mail addresses.  A growing number of "gateways" tie more and more 
people to the Net every day.  

The basic concepts behind e-mail parallel those of regular mail.  You 
send mail to people at their particular addresses.  In turn, they write 
to you at your e-mail address.  You can subscribe to the electronic 
equivalent of magazines and newspapers. Sooner or later, you'll probably 
even get electronic junk mail. 

E-mail has two distinct advantages over regular mail.  The most obvious 
is speed. Instead of several days, your message can reach the other side 
of the world in hours, minutes or even seconds (depending on where you 
drop off your mail and the state of the connections between there and 
your recipient).  The other advantage is that once you master the basics, 
you'll be able to use e-mail to access databases and file libraries.  
You'll see how to do this later, in chapter 10, along with learning how 
to transfer program and data files through e-mail. 

E-mail also has advantages over the telephone.  You send your message 
when it's convenient for you.  Your recipients respond at their 
convenience.  No more telephone tag.  And while a phone call across the 
country or around the world can quickly result in huge phone bills, e-
mail lets you exchange vast amounts of mail for only a few pennies -- 
even if the other person is on the other side of the earth. 

E-mail is your connection to help -- your Net lifeline.  The Net can 
sometimes seem a frustrating place!  No matter how hard you try, no 
matter where you look, you just might not be able to find the answer to 
whatever is causing you problems. But when you know how to use e-mail, 
help is often just a few keystrokes away: you can ask your system 
administrator or a friend for help in an e-mail message. 

 
SMILEYS
 
 
When you're involved in an online discussion, you can't see the smiles or 
shrugs that the other person might make in a live conversation to show 
he's only kidding.  But online, there's no body language. So what you 
might think is funny, somebody else might take as an insult.  To try to 
keep such misunderstandings from erupting into bitter disputes, we have 
smileys.  Tilt your head to the left and look at the following sideways. 
:-).  Or simply :).  This is your basic "smiley." Use it to indicate 
people should not take that comment you just made as seriously as they 
might otherwise.  You make a smiley by typing a colon, a hyphen and a 
right parenthetical bracket. Some people prefer using the word "grin," 
usually in this form: 
 
     <grin>   
 
Sometimes, though, you'll see it as *grin* or even just <g> for short. 
 
Some other smileys include: 
 
     ;-)      Wink; 
     :-(      Frown; 
     :-O      Surprise; 
     8-)      Wearing glasses; 
     =|:-)=   Abe Lincoln. 
    
OK, so maybe the last two are a little bogus :-).
