Module 2.1 - Email

A few thoughts that i have had since doing the reading for this part of the module.

It can be good to use the flags - or even reminder flags - to highlight certain emails.

I have never been a fan of the read-receipt that comes with some emails, but in a work environment i can see how this can be useful to determine if the recipient has at least recieved the email and it hasn't gotten lost in cyberspace.

Choosing an email server is always a difficult choice. I originally had been using my isp account, however this means that if you change isp you lose this account and have to notify all contacts of a change in address! I have now started using google's gmail as my main email account. I find this a fantastic service as i can still use outlook to read my emails, but if i delete an email accidently there is always a backup copy on the google server. The only problem i have found with this is that when i had to reformat my hard-drive recently all the emails redownloaded - and this took about a day to be complete with many emails being downloaded 3 or 4 times.

I find that on a personal email account there are many types of emails that are recieved.
1) email from family and friends
2) advertising email that you have requested (like wanted junk mail ie advertisements)
3) information (i receive daily the news.com.au newsletter which keeps me at least a little up to date!)
4) and then true spam.

There are also many ways that emails are written these days and the main thing is to choose when what style is appropriate.

1) a casual email - for example when i write to my husband through out the day at his work i'm normally lazy and either don't use a subject line or it will be really vague like "hi" and we just keep this conversation going throughout the day. It is often full of notes, half sentences and single words - but it saves many useless phone calls
2) more formal emails - when i'm going to use email to request information, apply for a job, etc the tone of the email will change to the more formal tones. This will be written more like a letter with appropriate capitilisation, full stops, full sentences, and some sort of appropriate greeting, and farewell line.

Pet Peeve!
My biggest pet peeve on the internet is the use of "chat speak" or "l33t". I find it difficult to read, and sometimes the word written in leet is just as long as the word itself! I msyelf always try to use at least some semblance of appropriate grammer and spelling (aside from the typos) in all my internet communications.

I do not mind the occasional abbreviation though which i will use in my casual emails including the usual LOL, ROFL etc. I will also include the occasional basic smillie :) or :(

It should always be remember though when using these abbreviations that the person you are writting to may not know what they stand for!

I think that is all my thoughts on email in general at this point....of to read the next module!