How to write an e-mail might seem like something easy, but it is not? What makes writing an e-mail different from any other type of letter is the fact that you are limited to using only ASCII (or another one of the many online encodings). You cannot use fancy text or pictures in your email; you can only use letters and numbers says Fred Auzenne. This kind of simplicity has always created a challenge for me when I had to send an e-mail. The easiest way for me was to copy/paste someone else’s mail, change some parts and send it on its way. In this article I will teach you how to do just that, but in a more detailed manner so you don’t have to struggle with frustrating problems like I did.
What is an e-mail?
An e-mail (electronic mail) is a data message transmitted via the electronic communications network (email, internet), consisting of a sender address, one or more recipient addresses and its content. This guide assumes that you know what an e-mail is and that you want to learn how to send your own messages without looking like a fool trying to imitate other people’s messages. If you are one of those people who still think its cool copying/pasting everything they can find on the web please read this little disclaimer: Copying text from the Internet might be construed as plagiarism which in most cases will get you into trouble. Plagiarism is a serious academic offense that can lead to suspension or expulsion from college or university or to being barred from future registration in the same institution.
As per Fred Auzenne the first step of writing a professional e-mail is putting together a proper sender address. This means you need an email account; if you don’t have one make sure you get one now because it will be very hard for you to follow this article without one (or use some other website like Gmail). Some of us might already have an e-mail account and we might only want to know how to write our own mails, but we still need our computer to access our mail —and we do not want anyone else reading it— so we must keep it safe. When creating an e-mail account remember to pick a complex password.
Make it at least 10 characters long, don’t use words found in the dictionary or any other kind of common text that can be easily guess. Use both letters and numbers so you can remember it better. If you are one of those people who never bother changing their password every X amount of time please do so now too; if your account gets hack someone might delete all your mails, change your address or send spam messages from your email address which will affect all the addresses you had created/used with that email before. Making sure that no one else has access to your e-mail is very important!
The next step is putting together a proper recipient list. This list can be empty if you are sending mail to yourself or it can contain all the addresses you want to send your message. You should always separate multiple recipients with commas (,). Below I will explain some different ways of sending e-mails and how each one of them works.
A little disclaimer about sending mails
Sending an e-mail might seem very easy at first, but there are lots of problems that arise when trying to send a mail; for example: entering the wrong address, forgetting to put ‘the’ before someone’s name (sending mails without capital letters like this is not good for your reputation), no server found, nonexistent domain names, etc. There are lots of things that can go wrong (and trust me, they do). The best advice I can give you is to always double check the addresses and make sure you typed them properly says Fred Auzenne.
Sending mails without any problems
Sending an e-mail with just one recipient is very simple; basically all you need is this kind of text: “I’m sending this mail to myself” (the address) “me” (the subject) “Hello!” (The content). Note that you can add anything you like; I just chose to write the word ‘Hello’ because it’s one of the most common words and it will be easier for me to find all my mails in my inbox later.
Conclusion:
If you choose to send an e-mail with just one recipient, use this kind of format: sender address (the subject) “Hello!” (The content). If you want to add more than one recipient put them all on the same line so they will be separate by commas.
