This is also referred to the "mailto" address.

When you write a postal - snail-mail - letter, what do you put on the envelope to make sure the postman knows where to bring it? - The name and the address of the recipient. Exactly. And it's the same with e-mail. You just don't use the street address of the person your e-mail should go to but its e-mail equivalent, the e-mail address.

On a postal letter you also write your own address so everybody knows whom the letter is from (because then they're even more eager to read it supposedly). It's the same with e-mail. There is a field called "From:" where your e-mail address, the address of the sender is put. But since this does not normally change, your e-mail software inserts this automatically for you.

But there are more empty lines...what do you put there? Here you can put more e-mail addresses. When you want to send a snail-mail letter to more than one person, you have to print it several times and write different envelopes. With e-mail, this is much easier. You simply use the "Cc:" field to specify more recipients. They'll get a copy of your e-mail.

An e-mail address nowadays always contains a "@". This means "at" and serves as a separator. To the left is the user name of a person "at" a domain to the right. The domain can be a company, for example. "Microsoft.com" or "Whitehouse.gov" are domains. At "microsoft.com", you could have "bill" and "steve". Their e-mail addresses would be "bill@microsoft.com" and "steve@microsoft.com", respectively.

If you do not know the e-mail address of the person(s) you wish to send an e-mail, there are online e-mail phone books. Below are several online places where you can search for e-mail addresses.

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• () ValHaring - 22 Jul 2002
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