Talk:E-mail

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News This page has been cited as a source by a media organization. See the 2005 press source article for details.

The citation is in: Stephanie Schorow. "E-ager to join the debate", Boston Herald, March 11, 2005.

Contents

[edit] Email versus E-mail

How about adding the phrase, "(generally spelled 'e-mail' by the press, but 'email' by the computer industry)"

Note that the RFC documents for TCP/IP, SMTP, POP and IMAP always refer to "mail" or "email". In this sense, the preference for "e-mail" on Wikipedia is not a judgement call, but simply an error, and should be corrected.

From the article: "abbreviated 'e-mail' or, more commonly, 'email'." Yes, and "OMG" is more common than "Oh my god." But when the masses are disregarded, and one searches Google News to determine which spelling of "e-mail" is more commonly used by educated writers, one learns that "e-mail" is used thrice as often. --75.4.26.89 02:42, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

Please look at the bottom of this [1] page, on Donald Knuth's homepage. From there it is clear that using 'e-mail' as opposed to 'email' is anti-American, so if we prefer not to subject ourselves to massive aerial bombardments, and avoid the faith of the teachers unions and the pro-choice crowd [2], I think it might be better if we use 'email' primarily. Sorry for the sarcasm:) I'm just trying to attract attention because I agree with professor Knuth's comment and I think it'd be better to converge towards using 'email' and not 'e-mail'. --Nimc 19:12, 26 Apr 2004 (UTC)

What's Knuth's comment on european-language versions of the "email" word all about? Ojw 12:58, 16 Feb 2005 (UTC)
He's probably talking about the OED definition of email, which includes the definition of "embossed (with a raised pattern) or perh. arranged in a net or open work”. See [3], for example. -- Kaszeta 13:49, 16 Feb 2005 (UTC)
yes, but the hyphen is there to stand instead of the apostrophe which is normally used in words that are contracted or shortened. This means that the proper and correct spelling of 'Electronic Mail' is 'E-mail'.
true, true. he has a point.

Some comments:

And, the word "spam" in English is either unwanted email or canned meat. I think the French/Germans can live with "email" as enamel or messages, just as they handle spam. -Wikid77 16:52, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
  • Knuth's arguments concerning hyphen omission is not "avoiding bombs" but that the hyphen in two-word expressions got dropped when it became common. I don't agree for several reasons:
  1. Concerning the example he gives, "nonzero" is still less common than "non-zero" according to google (9oo ooo vs 1.4 M hits)
  2. I just tried another one than came to my mind, "nondemocratic" (23ooo) vs "non-democratic" (116ooo)...
  3. Why create "nonzero", when "non-zero" already exists for several years ? Mainly laziness, I suppose. Indeed, it also get more and more common to write "U R" instead of "You are", so please, those who want to be ahead of their time, feel free...
  4. The case of e-mail is not at all the same; "e" is not a word, but an abbreviation. We still say H-bomb, G-point,... and also A-grade, T-shirt, and so on, and I doubt this will ever change. MFH 14:41, 18 Mar 2005 (UTC)
The last point brings up another issue: that the E in e-mail is pronounced as a distinct letter rather than as part of the following word. If it were the latter, the pronunciation would be merged with the following letter, in this case the letter m. The first syllable is pronounced ee, not em. -- Yama 04:52, 5 Apr 2005 (UTC)
I fully agree with the last two people, MFH and Yama. To me, it's very simple—it is equivalent to A-bomb (atomic bomb), U-boat (undersea boat), C-section (Cesarean section), e-commerce (electronic commerce), etc. Would you ever spell those words like Abomb, Uboat, Csection, etc.? Not only would it not make sense, like Yama said it could also change the pronunciation. Merriam-Webster defines this use of "e-" (see entry 2) as a combining form and gives the etymology as "e-mail". Merriam-Webster, which is considered the authority on the English language in America, does not even have an entry for "email", and the entry for "e-mail" does not even list a variant. --DylanW 11:56, 20 January 2006 (UTC)
As DylanW rightly points out, there is a whole family of 'e-' terms. Also: the general rule that hyphens disappear with use does not apply if the contracted form is easy to misread. Hence "re-emerge", not "reemerge" etc. The term ecommerce looks strange because it seems to start with the prefix 'eco-'. No doubt there are many other examples. However to me the most convincing argument for the hyphen remains the pronounciation of the letter E, as a letter of the alphabet rather than an opening vowel. (And yes: pedantic linguists can be very annoying). 172.178.84.157 10:08, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

Personally, I think the pedantic linguists are idiots. But the debate of "email" versus "e-mail" is rather extensive, and there's a whole sub-argument carried by people who insist it can't be a noun and that the proper term is "e-mail message." Like I said, I think it's dumb -- but it is significant, and all this should be addressed in the article. It probably deserves its own subsection. Opinions?


Yeah, I agree that the argument takes up a lot of time with very little outcome. I like "Email", cause
  • it's shorter
  • I agree with Donald Knuth (if it's used common, make it easy)
  • It takes less time to write
  • Why reduce homonymns? (Vitreous enamel vs. Email) They exist anyway.
  • "Email" is more common (2 billion vs. 1.6 billion (!) google hits)
Question of adding a subsection about the debate: If there are other people talking about the debate, why not. I'm not sure it's a widely-debated thing, though. Peter S. 15:29, 2 February 2006 (UTC)


The definition of Internet email (RFC 2822) says email, not e-mail. Same for those who discuss it, manage it...; see emailaddresses.com, sendmail.com (postfix, exim just call it 'mail'!) Gen'l use too, as someone mentioned, per google, is mostly 'email'. Of major free email providers: AOL and Hotmail call it e-mail (AOL uses both, actually); google and Yahoo call it email. Not to mention that 'email' was dominant until some massive site-wide editing took place, some of which I've reverted. Elvey 05:46, 3 February 2006 (UTC)


In the grand tradition of inventing new words for new concepts, I'd vote for email with both hands. Will


At the very least the title of this article should be changed from 'E-mail' to 'Email'. I was actually surprised to see 'e-mail' used in this article outside of a historical context -- let alone to see that it was being used as the article's title. Ultimately, it appears that the use of the 'e-mail' form is a holdover from the early/mid 1990s when many tech terms were being introduced to mainstream culture and were still hyphenated when abbreviated as they had been in previous decades. And that, furthermore, this hyphenated form has been perpetuated into the 21st century by the common scenario of newcomers to technology often and unwittingly absorbing outdated information during the process of self-teaching.

In addition, the numbers listed above for hits that resulted from searches on Google are incorrect -- or more likely just out-of-date. Furthermore, I think it's unfair to simply use Google as the only source (just because something is trendy and hyped doesn't mean it's the only pertinent source out there -- nor the best). Therefore, I've included some current (as of Feb 25, 2006) numbers from several of the most widely used search engines:

  • Yahoo: 'email' = 3,430,000,000 / 'e-mail' = 2,410,000,000
  • Altavista: 'email' = 3,440,000,000 / 'e-mail' = 2,410,000,000
  • Google: 'email' = 2,260,000,000 / 'e-mail' = 1,870,000,000
  • MSN: 'email' = 596,699,110 / 'e-mail' = 474,126,191
  • Lycos: 'email' = 518,620,000 / 'e-mail' = 276,720,000

Hope this helps towards the eventually refinement of this article. -- Stereoisomer 20:49, 25 February 2006 (UTC)

Right, because what is popular is always what is semantically correct :p Family Guy Guy 16:29, 12 May 2006 (UTC)
13-September-2006: Now, the relative counts of the spellings are:
  • Google: 'email' = 4,480,000,000 / 'e-mail' = 3,620,000,000 / both = 668,000,000.
Those figures are from Google advanced-search of "email" without "e-mail" etc. -Wikid77 17:10, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

"E-mail" must go. The correct spelling is "email". Don Knuth is correct, of course. 66.188.109.56 18:05, 9 April 2006 (UTC)

Obviously there is some disagreement as to what is "correct". Wikipedia does not operate by a majority vote either. And I believe the titles of articles use the spelling preferred by the original author. 172.174.171.163 11:26, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
  • And Bill Walsh insists on "e-mail." The point is, the debate is notable and needs to be acknowledged. It's not our job, as an encyclopedia, to decide which convention is better or best. That's a job for a stylebook. We just need to report the existence of an extensive disagreement.

This is almost certainly a waste of bandwidth, but I can't resist offering a few observations about "e-mail" vs. "email". First, in my view, both are far too cutesy. And both lead to the egregious locution "an e-mail/email", even though nobody would say "Send me/I received a mail". But since "email" looks as if somebody's commenting on the state of health of Dorothy Gale's uncle's wife, it's clearly the worse of the two. Though I say it who coined it, I dearly wish people would instead call it netmail, as we called it when we were inventing it [and I do mean "we"; see the relevant External Link (the identity of which will soon be made obvious)] -- but, then, I also wish people would pronounce "WWW" as "sextuple-U", though not nearly as dearly.

cheers, map Mike Padlipsky (a/k/a M. A. Padlipsky, when writing published articles and, of course, The Book)

For what it's worth: A few months ago, I happened to watch an episode of Countdown (game show), in which a contestant offered "email" as a word. The lovely learned lady in 'Dictionary Corner' explained that the word was permitted as an answer because "it used to be hyphenated, but isn't any longer" (hyphenated words aren't permitted as answers in the show). That was when I decided to start using "email" rather than "e-mail". 81.79.108.80 17:13, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

Google, Yahoo, Apple and Microsoft use "email". CNN, BBC and New York Times use "e-mail" but they are incorrect. Large media organizations use style manuals, and that makes them slow to adjust to changes in usage. "Email" is now a very common english word and there is no-longer any reason it should be hyphenated. Also, search for "email headers" vs. "e-mail headers". People who know more about email prefer the spelling "email" almost 4 to 1.

[edit] Date of first email

  • The first email (message from one computer to another linked only by arpanet, using '@' to separate username from host) has been sent in Oct.1971, according to R. Tomlinson, see [4] where you even have a link on the photograph of the computers sending and receiving it, which makes it particularly "authentic" to me (w.r.t. many other sources citing him giving the same year).
  • The page for 1971 cites "first email", 1972 does not, but most pages cite the latter (which should be corrected).
  • Maybe the best would be to create a page First email where a detailed account is given (including as many "digested" references as possible) allowing people to find the year corresponding to the definition of "first email" they intend. MFH 14:41, 18 Mar 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Morse code?!

There was a sentence here saying something to the effect that e-mail has essentially replaced Morse code. That's like saying jet airplanes replaced the horse and buggy, without mentioning the bicycle, cars, buses, and everything else. The telegraph was all but replaced already by the telephone. E-mail has hardly made a dent in that. --LDC

Useful intermediate points between telegrams and email would be not the telephone, but rather telex and fax. Like email and telegrams -- and unlike telephone -- these are textual and message-based media rather than bidirectional voice media.
It seems to me that email is replacing fax, much as fax displaced telex, to some extent in business. One empirical measure of this would be what contact information people place on their business cards -- once it was phone and telex; then phone and fax; now frequently either phone, fax, and email or simply phone and email.
(I actually dealt with a telex-to-email gatewaying issue last year, which rather surprised me -- I had no idea my workplace was still using telex!) --FOo 15:12, 4 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Although the social problems of email links are useful, they could be slightly more useful by being more than a linklist. Ought to get on to that one sometime... -- User:Bbtommy

[edit] Earliest networked message system?

John G. Kemeny (late former President of Dartmouth College and co-inventor of BASIC once told me (in 1985) in a private conversation that, although he could not prove it, he believed that the earliest use of computers for person-to-person messaging occurred in 1964, on DTSS (the Dartmouth Time Sharing System). While not email, per se, the story could add some background. Apparently, a male Dartmouth student set up a shared file for exchanging text messages with his girlfriend. That's all it was, but it served a purpose. Dartmouth was all-male at the time, and the girlfriend was able to access the system via teletype from the all-female college in Massachusetts that she was attending. Dr. Kemeny remarked that this story proved that motivated students were the best innovators... after all, what greater motivation could there be?

Is this worth noting here? If not, how about if I get corroboration? I've found a web site ([5]) dedicated to discussions amongst the programmers who developed DTSS, and one of them may be able to verify the story.

I'd say no, because it wasn't a mechanism created intended for general use. Also, there were probably other instances of something like this, which will of course be undocumented because they were personal, and it would be unfair to call out this particular one. Noel 18:56, 8 Sep 2003 (UTC)

I came to this article for other reasons, and noted the supposition that 'SAGE' may have had some email capabilities. I worked in SAGE for 3 years as a RICMO (Radar Inputs Countermeasures Officer). I was intimately involved in how the computer operated, and passed data. SAGE did not have emaill as we know it today. It passed target track information in frames between sectors. This was not email in the sense of person A sending a message to Person B. It was formated electronic data indicating direction, height, identity, and other information of aircraft tracks. Only in the broadest sense would this be called email. Any communication between sectors more complex than that was done by phone. I'd recommend either eliminating the reference to SAGE or adding the comment "This was limited to formatted data regarding airplane tracks, not human communication."

I, too, came to this article for other reasons ("googing" for 'padlipsky personal web page', actually) and originally intended simply to comment on "E-mail was quickly extended to become network e-mail, allowing users to pass messages between different computers. The messages could be transferred between users on different computers by 1966, but it is possible the SAGE system had something similar some time before." which is more than mildly ludicrous in that what's currently thought of as "networks" weren't in existence by 1966. [No, I won't get involved in a debate over when networks did happen -- beyond mentioning that ARPANET wasn't _really_ going in '69; the first very few sites were attached to IMPs, but the important protocols were barely even discussed yet.)

However, having gotten into the racket via the SDC SAGE Programmer Training course myself, I can certainly offer some corroboration to the Unknown RICMO's comments w/r/t SAGE's not having netmail, as we called it when we were inventing it. Or if it did it wasn't mentioned in the training program, anyway; since I managed to avoid deployment to a SAGE field site, I can't speak from first-hand experience.

More interesting, to me at any rate, is the mention of passing tracking data from (SAGE) sector to (SAGE) sector. Gosh and golly, if that's the ancestor of anything in today's "world of networking", I bet it's File Transfer!!! (another area in which I worked, as it happens -- and much longer than in SAGE, though it would ill-become me to say much more deeply and significantly, even if I do think so privately).

And speaking of file transfer, unless my eyes slipped the main article doesn't seem to mention that netmail, as we called it when we were inventing it, was originally implemented (or instantiated, if you prefer) as an FTP command. See the relevant External Link for more, if you're curious ... where the relevant link's identity should become obvious when I sign this (since I really don't want to bother creating an account):

cheers, map Mike Padlipsky (a/k/a M. A. Padlipsky, when writing published articles and, of course, The Book)

[edit] Attachments

Should discuss attachments. --Daniel C. Boyer 16:12, 9 Sep 2003 (EDT)


This might be good literature on that topic:

Whittaker, S. and Sidner C., Email Overload: Exploring Personal Information Management of Email. Proceedings of CHI 1996 (Vancouver, April 1996), ACM, pp. 276-283.

--Hullbr3ach 3 July 2005 23:51 (UTC)

I agree with Daniel Boyer (1st post) but don't have time or expertise to research this.

Besides attachments, should also discuss graphic or other non-text content, e.g. drawings or photographs (audio files too?), that gets placed directly in the message section of the email. How is this done? and does it increase the of malware getting in when a message is opened?

[edit] E-mail not using SMTP over TCP/IP

Just noticed that there's no mention of X.400, FidoNet, early private email networks like MCIMail, or of email on on-line services like CompuServe and AOL (before they offered Internet access). I think I'll start working on filling in a few of these blanks. Rhsatrhs 13:19, 17 Sep 2003 (UTC)

[edit] E-mail address explanation

Currently says:

A modern Internet e-mail address is a string of the form jsmith@corporation.com. It should be read as "jsmith at corporation.com". The first part is the username of the person, and the second part is the domain name (hostname) of the computer in which that person has an e-mail account.

If no one objects, I will soon replace that with:

A modern Internet e-mail address is a string of the form jsmith@corporation.com. It should be read as "jsmith at corporation dot com". The part after the at-sign is the domain name (hostname) of a particular computer. The part before the at-sign indicates a particular account (username) of a person who uses that computer.

Why is it "modern" ? It is better to say: the recommended (by ... in 20?? = format of the address is the following. However, adhering to this convention is not enforced (i.e. info@customer.support.com is a valid address). rené bach

-- DavidCary 19:33, 9 Feb 2004 (UTC)

That paragraph has three mistakes: the part after the @ is not necessarily a hostname nor does it necessarily correspond to a particular computer; the part before the @ does not necessarily correspond to an account or username. Now fixed. Gdr 16:26, 2004 May 14 (UTC)
I agree with DavidCary, this isn't a "modern" Internet e-mail address -- they've always been in this format on the Internet. I've removed the word "modern". Adw2000 11:00, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] How often is Email actually used, compared to Snail Mail

Can anyone add statistics comparing E-Mail with snail mail? I couldnt find any on the net. Thanks (Consti)

I believe snail mail has a higher usage Zarroc

Most peoples' bank and billing are done through snail-mail; e-mail has more spam/junk than the snails, though. So I'm not sure. If we're talking legitimate, solicited/nonadvertising e-mail, then I'd say snail mail. In terms of total volume, I'd suggest e-mail. But "Consti" is right -- actual usage data would be important. Does, say, the USPS have any statistics databases? We might at least be able to give some sort of figures for the United States. -- Drostie 07:22, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Separate "Email security" page?

I just noticed someone's added an article on "is it time to encrypt email" -- do we/should we have a separate page for "email encryption and authentication"? Maybe covering:

- PGP, GPG, S/MIME and whatever outlook uses
- transport layer encryption, POP over SSL etc.
- Non-signature (e.g. SPF) verification methods

Ojw 13:03, 16 Mar 2005 (UTC)

There are already articles on Email authentication, SMTP-AUTH, S/MIME (stub), PGP, GPG, Transport Layer Security, and Sender Policy Framework. I gather you're talking about how all these fit together specifically in the context of e-mail? I think it might be sufficient to expand the "Privacy problems regarding e-mail" section. --Rick Block (talk) 13:34, Jun 1, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Reader Friendliness?

Can we please have a more reader friendly page about email? The topic itself is so pervasive and its cultural impact, etc. is not really covered well. There is too much jargon about how email works. It is not getting the page it deserves imo. --70.240.86.188 20:05, 8 January 2006 (UTC)

Possibly a Jargon-free page for those who may not know what all the abbreviations mean? (i know i don't) Zarroc

[edit] E-Mail vs E-mail address

I believe we should keep the following three topics separated (as separate definitions):


1) E-Mail (system) is the whole system that a user uses to send letters in electronic forms (including multimedia information) (client e-mail application, e-mail-server, Internet)

2) Item sent by the user of the email system

3) email address (abrv. sometimes: email) is the reference used to address the e-mail. The address is needed to send the email to the intended person. The address is handled differently than the body of the message. (How, I am no expert)

We could reference to the article explaining the different headers/fields of the e-mail: timestamp, routing info, To: From:, etc...

rené bach, terminologue, Switzerland Renebach

  • I agree that they should be kept separate. This article is very long and merging them will only make it much longer. Jll 09:46, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Non-delivery

craig of craigslist said that 1-2% of emails sent to big free email servers (e.g. hotmail, gmail, etc.) never make it through due to the nature of the technology. there should be something about that. [6] Comment from anon user 67.175.141.28

  • How reliable a source is craig of craigslist? Jll 09:46, 8 May 2006 (UTC)
  • Very Ben

[edit] mailto:

mailto: redirects here, but the article doesn't contain the term mailto. Fix it. 82.139.85.118 15:49, 1 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Plural?

Perhaps we should have a discussion about the plural of E-mail? I've always thought that E-mail was both singular and plural, as in "I got an e-mail from Jessica," or "I'm checking my e-mail." You don't hear, "I'm checking my e-mails." However I'm increasingly hearing both, "I had a lot of e-mail" and "I had a lot of e-mails". I'm sure it's something more for Wikiticionary but, which is correct?—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 71.255.97.40 (talk • contribs).

But would one say "I'm sending different email to five different people" or "I'm sending different emails to five different people"? Bayerischermann 05:01, 18 June 2006 (UTC)
I think both are acceptable. Like "fish" and "fishes". ChaosSorcerer91 17:48, 30 September 2006 (GMT)
Isn't the simplest solution just to use e-mail as an adjective, i.e. "I sent e-mail messages to five people"? -- Rick Block (talk) 18:11, 30 September 2006 (UTC)

Both forms are used. It's bootless to say that one is "correct" and the other "incorrect" without reference to some kind of standard, such as a newspaper's style guide or a general understanding that one form is representative of better education.

It's true that emails is sometimes used as a plural, as in "I got a thousand spam emails this week" or "I sent emails to ten people today." (Contrast this latter with "I sent email to ten people today," which doesn't suggest that each message was sent to one person.) --FOo 20:27, 30 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Cleanup

This article had a lot of "unenclosed link braces" (eg, ... HTML]] ...). I fixed what I saw, but someone might need to go through with a fine-tooth comb. 69.128.162.71 17:20, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Too short and needs section on different protocols

This is way to short to be an article about something as important as email! Somehow, more info. should be added to this article. Also, there needs to be sections built in to this article on the different email protocols of IMAP, POP, and SMTP.

[edit] Too long and needs a lighter touch

Seems to me, it's only an individual article and should not attempt to be an encyclopedia of E-mail technology. What it fails to do is describe E-mail to people who use it but don't understand that they've got an AOL client, or that there are servers in between. The "How it works" section needs to start with somthing like, "The sender's computer is running a "client" program including a writing program. It sends the message to a "server" computer, which sends it through other servers as necessary, to the recipient's computer which is also running a client program. This client shows the message to the recipient." Alphabet soup jargon such as RFC, CCITT, SMPT may be listed, but should only be used in later, more detailed paragraphs. Most of the more advanced questions should be relegated to linked articles along with other protocols and details. Jim.henderson 15:12, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Foreign E-mails

How come people from all over the world threaten me with foreign e-mails labeled "URGENT!"?! All these foreign people of foreign banks talk about is that some Mr. Andreas Schranner from Munich, Germany, died in the plane crash along with his family and all other passengers on Monday, July 31, 2000, and that his $6.8 million will be unclaimed bills unless I get the funds transferred to their account immediately. I think it's only a scam to promote my identity theft. Do you? --Angeldeb82 18:10, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

I also recieve many emails like that . I also recieved that Mr. Andreas Schranner from Munich, Germany, died in the plane crash along with his family and all other passengers ......... . I also don't want to recieve such mails . --Anishgirdhar 06:35, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Other languages

What's this section all about? What the writer of this section intending to let readers know of this exact article in another language?

Delete the section?100110100 01:07, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

Note: this section was deleted a while back. Wrs1864 03:57, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Spyware In This Article!>?!>!

Has someone embedded spyware in to this article?!??!!! Maybe code?!?!11 It's only this article too. I can't edit it, TrendMicro blocks me, saying that it blocked me from sending confidental information.100110100 01:20, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Spamming and e-mail worms

The usefulness of e-mail is being threatened by three phenomena: spamming, phishing and e-mail worms.

phishing is not discussed in the article. Please add it. --YoavD 12:39, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Email character encoding problem (japanese character set not supported)

an often seen problem is not mentioned here! when you get an email with japanese characters they often translate to a jibberish of other signs but when send to a japanese mobile phone they translate right

please mention that and add links to web based translation pages and software for home use. 124.102.32.2 05:08, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Please explain "push email" in this article

I'm reading about it in discussions of mobile phones but don't understand the term. Thanks. --Anishgirdhar 06:37, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

As it happens, we already have an entire article on push e-mail; I've added a link. Thanks for your suggestion! -- Beland 00:15, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Regular casing on article title

I changed the title of the article back to standard case format -- i.e., "E-mail" instead of "e-mail". Neither the article or the talk page explains why "e-mail" should be lower-case at all times -- and in fact it shouldn't. "E-mail" isn't like "iPod" -- for example, you would still capitalize "e-mail" when using it to begin a sentence. 24.185.71.25 00:32, 13 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] To e-mail or not to ...

What is an e-mail?

Well, several times the expression has been explained, debated, questioned, but above all misused.

As I see it, there is no such thing.

Mail, used to be simple. It could be letters, parcels, or anything that your postal service provider would distribute for or to you. The word itself, has no numeral.

Then, people try to bring order to this disorderly world of ours, by correcting, teaching, and suggesting how to use our respective languages on the Internet. One of these, unfortunately linked to by others, can be found at:

http://www.web-source.net/etips/issue_314.htm

Ms. Nobles, by all means a well-meaning person with noble things in her sights, misunderstands the word, then tries to teach you how to use it. Wrongly so, I’m afraid.

If you get a paper message by mail, you would most likely call it a letter. If you get a message through your e-mail service, wouldn't it be better to call it an e-letter?

KenNet —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 193.183.24.22 (talk) 11:40, 2 April 2007 (UTC).

[edit] Mechanism details

Please help improve this article or section by expanding it.
Further information might be found on the talk page or at requests for expansion.

Someone asked me recently why e-mail sometimes take more than a few seconds to get through. I know sometimes ail servers get overloaded and they start queuing messages until they can deal with them. And when they are unqueued, they don't necessarily get sent in a first-in, first-out fashion. I'm wondering if anyone has any handy references or is more familiar with the details than I am that would be able to add to the article. I expect there are also other sources of delay.

Also, looking at Received headers on various e-mails, the diagram which explains how e-mail gets from Alice to Bob seems to skip a number of intermediate servers. If someone familiar with how large organizations configure their mails services could explain more about this in the article, that would be enlightening. The current article seems to imply that such servers operate in parallel, but that would not explain the need for the same message to pass through more than two servers (in the sending and receiving ISP).

-- Beland 00:22, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

SMTP email was never designed to be an instantaneous delivery service. It was built to reliably get messages across the Internet back when fast links between big sites were slower and flakier than even today's slowest modems.
When a mail server tries to send a message to another one and fails, the sending server often does something akin to exponential backoff. It waits a while before retrying; and if that attempt fails too, it waits longer. So the number of failures for a particular message controls how long it'll be, after the link is up again, to try sending it again. --FOo 05:07, 7 April 2007 (UTC)
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