What Email is and How It Works

Email and Postal Mail

• The email message - Instead of using a pen to write a letter on paper, you're using your keyboard to type an email message in an email program on your computer.
• Sending the email - When the email is finished and has been addressed to the recipient's email address, you don't put a stamp on it and post it but press the Send button in the email program. This makes the email message go on its journey.
• Email transport - Like postal services transport letters and parcel, email servers transmit email messages from sender to recipient. Usually, emails are not delivered to the recipient directly, though, but waiting at the "nearest" mail server to be picked up by them.
• Fetching new mail - If you've got new mail in your mailbox, you go and fetch it. Similarly, your email program can check for new email messages at your mail server and download them for you to read.

The benefits and wonders of email include

• Convenience - If a desktop computer, laptop or mobile phone is around, you can type your email message wherever you want, save it for later use and send it at any time without having to worry about envelopes, stamps and tariffs.
• Speed - Emails typically arrive within seconds or minutes — anywhere in the world, something that can be said only about a negligible number of the letters I've sent via postal mail.
• Attachments - You can attach any file on your computer to an email message easily, regardless of its type and, mostly, size. It's as easy to send a long master's thesis around the world as it is to email a spread sheet, a report, pictures, or a saved game of your favorite game.
• Accessibility - Emails can be stored conveniently in your email program. Good programs make it easy to organize, archive and search your emails, so any information contained in an email is always readily accessible.
• Cost - Safe for the fee you pay for accessing the internet, sending and receiving emails is typically free.

Email's Problem

Unfortunately, the last beneficial wonder in particular is also responsible email's big problem: spam — unsolicited emails that are sent in huge numbers and clog mail servers as well as email programs.

With hundreds of these junk mails in your inbox, the occasional good email can be hard to spot. Fortunately, though, sophisticated filters exist that go through your new messages and sort out the unwanted ones automatically.