How to Write Your First Email

Email is a big part of many people's lives, but most still don't know how to use it effectively. Start by getting to know the email software you use. Macintosh users have Apple's Mail program installed as standard. This is an excellent email program with some very useful features such as thread highlighting; select a message and all related ones will be picked out as well. Windows users can choose Microsoft's Outlook Express or the more comprehensive Outlook, part of the Office software suite and possibly the most widely used email tool around.

Alternatively, both Mac and Windows users can choose from a large number of different programs such as Thunderbird and Firefox, both of which are far more secure against Windows email viruses than Outlook Express.

Setting up an email program can be a daunting task if you've never done it before. Fortunately, whatever program you use will prompt you for details as you start, so you just have to know a few key pieces of information. These are your email address, whether your mail account is POP or IMAP (or .Mac if you're using Apple's Mail), the incoming mail server address (for example mail.mydomain.com) and the outgoing server address (for example smtp.mydomain.com), and your email account's username and password. The outgoing server address may be the same as the incoming one, but don't assume this.

When your email program picks up your mail it first contacts the mail server computer, gives it your username and password, then proceeds to retrieve any waiting emails. It goes through a similar process when sending email, too.

Your email software will normally be set up to check for new mail automatically every now and then, as long as it can tell that you're online. If you want to check manually there will be a Check or Send and Receive button to click. The Compose or New button will create a new message, type an email address, enter your message and click Queue or Send. Queued emails will be sent when you next receive your mail, but you may also have to click a Send button to do this.

There's a certain etiquette involved in writing an email, but don't believe anyone who claims that there's just one right way to do this. As you'd expect, the right way to construct an email depends a lot on who you're talking to. They are less formally structured than written letters. You're expected to get to the point rather than including traditional preambles but just remember to apply a little common sense. As you'd expect, messages to company departments shouldn't be all that chatty, whereas a quick note to a friend is the equivalent to you just popping your head around a corner.

Email mailing lists are a very important part of using the Internet to your advantage, and these can become fairly social, close knit virtual communities. Take a little time once you join a list to read its archives and get a feel for the way its members talk to each other. When you do send a message or a reply to a mailing list always remember that you're speaking to absolutely everyone else that's joined the list; your email goes to the list server and is then bounced out to every other member automatically. If you wouldn't say what you're about to post to the whole crowd then post it to an individual instead, or don't say it at all. When replying the email, you should also take care to trim down the "quoted" content of the message. It is helpful to leave enough there to give others a bit of context for your reply, but that's all that's needed. Finally, basic "me too" replies generally do very little other than clogging up everyone's incoming mail; expand on your comment in some way or bite your tongue!

If someone annoys you it is all too easy to fire off a vitriolic reply in a few seconds. The trouble is, once it is sent there's no way to revert it, and mere minutes later you may regret what you just wrote. Such angry emails are often called "flames." Don't respond to these, if you ignore the people who wrote them, they will usually leave.