First let's contemplate the email message itself. Email is the electronic equivalent of writing a letter and sending it to someone in the post. The electronic part makes it much faster than the USPS and you don't have to pop for 34 cents (here in the USA) so it's free. This is good as far as it goes. Unfortunately the speed and ease with which email lets us reach out and touch someone, seems to have helped make it a lot more impersonal than the letter we all learned how to craft in school. Things get lost in our hurry to hit the send button. Like a greeting, punctuation, whole sentences, paragraphs. Basic stuff that makes your communications easier for the recipient to figure out.

If you write to someone it's always nice to include a greeting be it something as simple as:

Jim,

It's also a good idea to close with your name especially if the person you're emailing does not know you outside the context of the email. It's awkward when you reply to a message and the best you can do for a salutation is fish something from the header like: "Dear 123iggy@example.com"

Replying seems to give people trouble. Generally, in a business context you shouldn't reply to something unless the message specifically calls for a response or a response is necessary given the context of the message. Unfortunately, given the often unreliable nature of email an acknowledgment that the message was received is sometimes necessary. It's ironic the number of times I've emailed someone then had to phone them to see if they got the email. Sure you can use the confirmation request option that a number of email client software packages have but you may not get an automatic confirmation depending on the type of client software your recipient is using and the email servers your message passes through to get to them.

You also want to be aware of the difference between a "Reply" and a "Reply to All". A message that you've received may have been sent to more addresses than just yours. For example, if your address was in the To: line of the original message along with 10 other addresses and you hit "Reply to All" your response goes to all 10 names. Likewise if you "Forward" a message all the addresses in the To: line are visible and accessible to whomever you forwarded the original message to. So some discussion of the To: line is definitely in order.

The To: line is where you put the address of the person you are sending your message to. This is usually only the person you want to take action regarding the contents of your message. If you want other people to know about the message but not necessarily reply or take direct action you should include their addresses on the Cc: or Bcc: lines.

The Cc: stands for carbon copy, or courtesy copy if you prefer. If you're old enough to remember trying to stack paper and carbons and roll the whole shooting match into a typewriter you'll understand the reference. Bcc: stands for "blind" carbon copy. General rule of thumb is you copy people who need to know but don't need to respond. The "blind" carbon address line Bcc: differs from the Cc: line in that the recipient sees the address of the person(s) to whom the original message was sent but they cannot see the other addresses of those who were also included on the Bcc: line, hence the term "blind" carbon copy.

If send a message with an address like this:

To: Lee
Cc: Dan, Matt
Bcc: Al

Everyone knows I sent the message to Lee. Lee knows I sent a copy of the email to Dan and Matt. Dan knows Matt got a copy, Matt knows Dan got a copy, but neither Lee, Matt, nor Dan know that Al got a copy. Say I wanted to send a message to Lee, Dan, Matt, and Al but did not want any of them to know who else I sent the message to. I would address the message to myself and include everyone else on the Bcc: line.

To: Jim
Cc:
Bcc: Dan, Matt, Al, Lee

This is the way you send a message to a bunch of people but you don't want to share each person's email address with everyone you're sending the message to. It's bad email etiquette to share email addresses with groups of people unless the people who own the email addresses being shared have given their permission.

Another way email addresses are inadvertently shared among a group of people is through the "include original message text" option that most email clients not only support, but have switched on as the default.

This feature is what dumps the text of the message you received into your reply. And therein lies the rub.

Let's assume you receive an emaill message by virtue of your being included in a mailing list that your sister-in-law uses from time to time to keep the family in touch with one another. Sister One sends a message and includes a funny story she got from someone at her office. Sister Two comments and includes what she felt was a funnier story that she got from someone at her work. An argument ensues and this pulls Sister Three into the fray. Right away this breaches email etiquette wherein you should be mindful about who exactly you are sending your messages to. Hitting the "Reply to All" button is not necessarily your only choice. Especially when you go from a general conversation to a flame war. And, not that you're picking on your sisters-in-law, but some of us prefer NOT to get a copy of every funny story/joke/list/top ten/etc. that's floating around the Internet.

Anyway, every message in this email exchange included every previous message. It doesn't take long to get to the point where a message with a one-line response is literally 40 pages long when the entire message is printed out.

So first, beware of the "Reply to All" button. Second, you don't always communicate better by including the entire historic thread in a reply. In fact, it's not always necessary to include the entire message you are replying to even if it's only a single message. Consider deleting all but the pertinent portion of the original message that would lend context to your reply.

Then there's the issue of keeping email addresses private. This is especially acute when you forward a message (which again defaults to include original message text as you would expect). As you have probably guessed I get an inordinate amount of jokes and, er, other supposedly humorous posts forwarded to me from my wife's siblings. When you forward something to someone you are sending them a copy of the message that you received. Often these types of messages were forwarded by someone that was forwarded by someone that was forwarded by someone and on and on.

Not only is the original message sent, but the header information for every stop the message has made along the way, from user to user, and all the email addresses are included. The last "funny joke" that "you've just got to read" that I received had 72 email addresses scattered down through the chain of forwarded headers. It's a good bet that most of these addresses will wind up on a spam list somewhere if they keep floating around the internet.

Therefore, be mindful of all that you forward when you send an email message onward into the ether and be doubly aware of "text build-up" when you reply to a message. Oh, and remember that the "Reply to All" button is not always the best choice.

When sending email in Netscape, let Netscape do the wrapping for you. (Line wrap length is set in Edit, Preferences, Mail and Newsgroups, Messages. You'll find that 72-75 is good). Only hit the return key when starting a new paragraph.

You can check pasted material you are copying by using File, Send Later. Go to Unsent Messages and view it. If it needs some cleaning up, double click the message and it will open in a new composition window and you can easily fix, then send it.

Bonus tip: If you use automatic spell checking and your message has a lot of technical words, for example, that aren't in the dictionary, you can avoid spell checking them all by highlighting the last word in your message. This will cancel spell checking for that message only when you "Send" it.

The most important thing you can do to respond to unwanted email is not reply. Even if an email tells you that you can reply and be taken off the mailing list, don't answer. If the spammer is particularly unscrupulous, that may just be his or her way of verifying that the address is "live," in which case he or she may sell your address to yet another spammer, compounding the problem. In other words, trying to get removed from a junk emailer's list may simply lead to more junk email.

Many Internet users feel that because Net messages are short and informal, spelling and grammar don't count. Some even think that strange spelling makes them K00L . If you feel that way, theirs' not much wee can do about it.

I think that a sloppy, misspelled message is like a big grease stain on your shirt - your friends will know that it's you, but people who don't know you will conclude that you don't know how to dress yourself.

Many mail programs have spell checkers.

• In Eudora Pro (the commercial version of Eudora), check your spelling by clicking the dictionary icon (the ABC one) on the toolbar or choose Edit, C[h]eck Spelling from the menu.

• In AOL, click the dictionary icon.

• In Netscape, choose Tools, Check Spelling from the menu.

• n Outlook Express and Outlook 2000, you can elect, via the Options menu, to have your outgoing messages checked or choose [Tools, Spelling to check any message in progress.

Email can be intercepted and read as it passes from you to your intended recipient because email gets sent along whatever electronic pathway happens to be available at the moment.

Be careful if you have to send confidential information, such as your credit card number. Experts recommend sending half the credit card number in one message, half in another, and the expiration date in a third. The odds that one person can intercept all three messages, each going by a different random route, are astronomically low. Your Internet service provider and the intended recipient of your email are the only two sources who can see all three emails.

Viruses can also be attached to emails. They are typically programs that are attached to email messages, and they spread by sending themselves to the people who are listed in your address book. If you open or run a file attachment that contains a virus, your PC is in danger. The best way to protect yourself against this threat is never to save or open file attachments unless you're certain you can trust the source and you were expecting a file. If you weren't expecting to receive a file, you may want to send a message to the sender asking them to confirm that they sent you the original message and the attachment.

The email system uses post offices. They aren't something you can touch, but the post office is big part of email's success. In fact, next time you set up a new email address, you'll be prompted for something called a "POP3" account.

That's a shortcut for saying "Post Office Protocol Version 3" -- which is a mouth full.

A protocol is a way to get things done without running into stuff. That's a homely way of saying it, but if you apply what you know about the world you live in, you'll see that the electronic world is similar. Email has to follow certain protocols in its route around the globe. If it didn't, you'd never get it.

POP3 accounts are always for incoming mail.

The computer hosting your POP3 server does one thing, and does it well. It receives your email, placing it in a special place on a hard drive located on your host's server ("server" is just a fancy name for a computer that does nothing but serve up pages in answer to your request for information). When you check your mail, your email client (Outlook, Outlook Express, AOL, Netscape, etc.) sends a request to the server, checking for mail.

If you've got mail, it's downloaded to your computer. Then you can read it without having to be online.

SMTP accounts are always for outgoing mail.

SMTP stands for Simple Mail Transport Protocol. It's the part of the Internet that sends mail. A protocol is followed to ensure safe delivery to the recipient's mailbox, and not some other box.

Web-based email isn't the same as client-based email. OK, the message is the same, but the way you get your mail is different. Web based mail depends on your browser to read mail. You have to log into an account before you can receive, send or read it.

Use web-based email if you plan to travel a lot, and don't have local access numbers. Then you can get your mail from any computer anywhere in the world. All you need is an Internet connection and a browser. Hotmail.com, and Yahoo.com are common examples of web-based email services.

You can have as many email addresses as you can think of. There's no limit to the number of accounts you can set up, though a practical limit will be reached depending your creativity or need for various accounts.

If you send a lot of email to one address, right click a blank area of your desktop, select New,|Shortcut, and in the command line, enter (without quotes) "mailto:" followed by the mail address without spaces. Click on Enter and when prompted for the shortcut's name, enter the addressee or whatever you like. Thereafter, clicking on this new shortcut will open your email program composition window with the email address already entered.