Techie Couple

In today’s digital world, emails have become an essential part of daily life. Even primary school children need email accounts to stay connected and participate in online or digital projects. With this in mind, I thought it would be helpful to write a post for kids or any first-time email users to give them a basic understanding of how emails work.

Each day, billions of emails are sent and received worldwide, thanks to faster and more affordable internet access. In this post, we’ll first take a look at how email addresses are structured and explore some popular email providers.

Email Address Structure

Just as we all have unique home addresses, email addresses are also unique to each person. An email address consists of two parts, separated by the ‘@’ symbol:

name-part + ‘@’ + domain-part

• Name-part: This part represents the person’s name (e.g., ‘John’). Email addresses are case-insensitive, so ‘JOHN’, ‘John’, or ‘john’ are treated the same. However, if one person has an email address like ‘john’, no one else can create the same address. They may have to use variations like ‘john1’, ‘john_1’, etc.
  
• Domain-part: This part refers to the email service provider, such as ‘gmail.com’, ‘outlook.com’, etc.
  

Popular Email Providers

Here are some of the most popular email providers offering free personal email accounts:

• Gmail (Google)
  
• Outlook (Microsoft)
  
• Zoho Mail (Zoho)
  
• Yahoo Mail (Yahoo)
  
• iCloud Mail (Apple)
  

Sending Emails: One, Two, or Many

Just like sending a letter to one person and making copies for others, emails can be sent to one, two, or many recipients at the same time. When sending copies, you may or may not want the other recipients to know who else is receiving the email. This is where CC and BCC come in.

• To: The main recipient’s email address goes here.
  
• CC (Carbon Copy): If you want others to be informed that they are receiving a copy of the email, add their email addresses in the CC field. All recipients can see who was included in the CC.
  
• BCC (Blind Carbon Copy): If you want to send a copy to someone without the other recipients knowing, use the BCC field.
  

Email Content: Subject and Message

An email consists of two main parts: the Subject and the Content. The subject is a brief introduction to your message, and it’s the most important part of the email. A compelling subject line can make your recipient curious enough to open your email and read the content.

The Content is where you write the main message. This is where you share the detailed information or conversation you want to communicate.

In a future post, I’ll dive deeper into the technical aspects of creating and sending emails.

-He-