E-mail

From Saferpedia

E-mail or Electronic mail is the way to exchange digital messages. E-mail systems are based on the store - redirect model where the e-mail server accepts, redirects, delivers and stores messages for users which only have to connect to the e-mail structure, usually an e-mail server. Initially the e-mail was sent directly from one user's device to another user's device. Nowadays this case is very rare.

An e-mail message is formed from two elements: header and body. The header has control information including at least sender's address and one or more receivers' addresses. Usually additional information are added as a subject field in header.

The initial e-mail text environment was extended to transport multi-media content as an attachment.

Contents 1 Spelling 2 Use 2.1 In society 2.2 As flaming 2.3 E-mail bankruptcy 2.4 In business

Spelling

There are several variants of spelling which are sometimes the source of misunderstandings:

• "email" is the official form requested by IETF - Internet Engineering Task Force and is also recognized in most dictionaries;
• "e-mail" is another recommended form by some journalistic and technical guides;
• "mail" was the form used in the original RFC - Request For Comment;
• "eMail" with capital "M" was frequently used by ARPANET users and early developers of UNIX, CMS, AppleLink, Eworld, AOL, GEnie and Hotmail;
• "EMail" is a traditional form used in RFC for "author addresses" and is a spelling formed requested by history reasons.

Use

In society

In the last 50 years people changed the communication way many times, the e-mail being one of these ways. Nowadays meeting face to face to communicate doesn't represent the main way because people can use phone, fax or e-mail.

As flaming

Flaming is when a person sends a message with aggressive content. Flaming is most spread nowadays because the ease and impersonality of e-mail communication. Personal or phone confrontations request direct interaction where social regulations encourage courtesy, while e-mail communication is indirect interaction and courtesy can be forgotten. Flaming is generally discouraged by Internet communities because is considered to be impolite and unproductive.

E-mail bankruptcy

Also known as "tired e-mail", e-mail bankruptcy appears when a user ignores a large number of e-mails. The reason these e-mails become bankrupt is due to overloading with information that are impossible to read.

The professor of Law fro Standford University Lawrence Lessing is the inventor of this term.

In business

E-mail was widely accepted by business communities as the first electronic environment of communication and was the first to revolutionize business communication. The e-mail is very simple to understand and, just like mail letters, solves two base problems of communication: logistics and synchronization.

• Logistics: A great part of the business world is based on communication between people that are not in the same building, area or even country. E-mails offers the possibility to exchange information between two or more people without any additional costs and is less much expensive than face to face meetings or phone calls.

• Synchronization: Using real time communication like meetings or phone calls participants must work on the same time schedule and each participant must spend the same amount of time in the meeting or on the phone like the others. E-mail allows synchronization, meaning that each participant can control its schedule independently.

This term is in development.
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