How to Send Your First Email

How to Send An Email

Although email really took off with the boom in internet use in the early 1990s the first email was sent way back in 1971 by Ray Thompson via the ARPANET computer system. Email along with text of SMS messages are now the primary method of sending written communications around the globe. About 294 billion email messages per day are sent this means more than 2.8 million emails are sent every second and some 90 trillion emails are sent per year. This article explains how to send your very first email.

The speed of email and the ability to add images, documents and other elements such as clickable links to websites make it a much more flexible method of communication that letters or faxes.

In order to send and receive emails you will need an email account. There are a vast number of free email providers including Google's Gmail, Yahoo email and MSN's Hotmail. These emails accounts work via the internet and are called webmail accounts. The advantage of webmail is that you can log into the account from any computer with internet access and send and receive your email. These email accounts are protected by a username and password which you must type in each time you wish to access your mail.

Most Internet Service Providers will supply you with an email address when you sign up and this will normally be a webmail account but with the advantage that they can also be used via an email client. An email client is a piece of software that allows you to manage your e-mails offline. There are again a wide variety of email clients including Microsoft's Outlook Express and Outlook, Mozilla Thunderbird, Pegasus Mail and Apple Inc's Mail. One of the advantages of using an email client is that you don't have to enter your username and password whenever you want to access your email.

Once you have an email account you will be given an e-mail address. This is the address that other people will use to send you emails.

An email address, such as yourname @example .com, has two parts. The part before the @ sign is the local-part of the address, more often than not the username of the recipient (yourname), and the part after the @ sign is a domain name to which the email message will be sent. You need to pass the complete email address onto anyone you wish to receive email from.

When you want to send an e-mail there are three major parts you need to think about. The three elements are the recipients email address, the email subject line and the message itself. You may also want to add attachments such as photos or documents.

You need to add the email address of the person you want to contact in the To field of the e-mail. The email address needs to contain both parts of the address as mentioned above. Most email clients will also include CC and BCC fields. These stand of carbon copy and blind carbon copy and are terms that have survived from the days of typing pools and carbon paper! CC means that this person will be copied into the email message and that the recipient will be aware that someone else has been copied into the message. BCC is for copying people into message without the recipient being aware of the fact.

Once you have addressed the email message then the next field to complete is the subject line. Subject lines are important as the show the recipient what the nature of the email is and why they should open it. Subject lines should describe the content of the email simply. Blank subject lines are often marked as spam by email filters and will bounce back to you and not reach the person you sent it to.

Once you have completed the subject line then you need to write the content on the message itself! An e-mail message can contain text, images and hyperlinks. You can also attach files such as word documents, spreadsheets or photos. There is no upper or indeed lower limit to the amount of text that you add. Once you have completed the text and added your name at the bottom you just need to click send and then your message will be on its way through cyberspace.