Email Basics

 Email (electronic mail) is a way to send and receive messages across the Internet. It's similar to traditional mail, but it also has some key differences. To get a better idea of what email is all about, take a look at the infographic below and consider how you might benefit from its use.

Email advantages

• Productivity tools: Email is usually packaged with a calendar, address book, instant messaging, and more for convenience and productivity.
• Access to web services: If you want to sign up for an account like Facebook or order products from services like Amazon, you will need an email address so you can be safely identified and contacted.
• Easy mail management: Email service providers have tools that allow you to file, label, prioritize, find, group, and filter your emails for easy management. You can even easily control spam, or junk email.
• Privacy: Your email is delivered to your own personal and private account with a password required to access and view emails.
• Communication with multiple people: You can send an email to multiple people at once, giving you the option to include as few as or as many people as you want in a conversation.
• Accessible anywhere at any time: You don’t have to be at home to get your mail. You can access it from any computer or mobile device that has an Internet connection.

• Understanding email addresses

  To receive emails, you will need an email account and an email address. Also, if you want to send emails to other people, you will need to obtain their email addresses. It's important to learn how to write email addresses correctly because if you do not enter them exactly right, your emails will not be delivered or might be delivered to the wrong person.

  Email addresses are always written in a standard format that includes a user name, the @ (at) symbol, and the email provider's domain.

  The user name is the name you choose to identify yourself.

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• The email provider is the website that hosts your email account
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  Webmail providers

  Today, the top three webmail providers are Yahoo!, Microsoft's Outlook.com (previously Hotmail), and Google's Gmail. These providers are popular because they allow you to access your email account from anywhere with an Internet connection. You can also access webmail on your mobile device.