Electronic Mail

What Does Electronic Mail Mean?

Electronic mail (email) is a digital mechanism for exchanging messages through Internet or intranet communication platforms.

Techopedia Explains Electronic Mail

Email messages are relayed through email servers, which are provided by all Internet service providers (ISP).

Emails are transmitted between two dedicated server folders: sender and recipient. A sender saves, sends or forwards email messages, whereas a recipient reads or downloads emails by accessing an email server.

Email messages are comprised of three components, as follows:

Message envelope: Describes the email’s electronic format
Message header: Includes sender/recipient information and email subject line
Message body: Includes text, image and file attachments

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Margaret Rouse

Technology expert

Margaret is an award-winning writer and educator known for her ability to explain complex technical topics to a non-technical business audience. Over the past twenty years, her IT definitions have been published by Que in an encyclopedia of technology terms and cited in articles in the New York Times, Time Magazine, USA Today, ZDNet, PC Magazine, and Discovery Magazine. She joined Techopedia in 2011. Margaret’s idea of ??a fun day is to help IT and business professionals to learn to speak each other’s highly specialized languages.

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