document transmitted electronically from the user's computer or terminal to an information service. Accountants and their clients can take advantage of electronic mail to transmit essential messages. With electronic mail, each user in the system has a "mailbox," which receives, holds, and sends information to Others. The information sent may be spreadsheets, reports, memos, and so forth.
system that allows a person to type a message to one computer or terminal and then send that message to someone at another computer or terminal, usually via internet. The message will be stored until the receiver chooses to read it.
the transmission of messages by computer from one person to another. Messages are saved until the recipient chooses to read them. E-mail is much more convenient than ordinary mail or telephone calls because it arrives immediately but does not require the recipient to be present, nor does it interrupt anything else the recipient may be doing. Messages are easily printed out, saved on disk, or forwarded to other people.
All users of e-mail should be aware that backup copies of the messages can be saved on disk or tape and that perfect privacy cannot be guaranteed. Contrast instant messaging; chat room; newsgroup. See also spam.
For abbreviations commonly used in electronic mail,see AFAIK; AFAIR; BTW; FWIW; IANAL; IMHO; IRL; RYFM; TIA; YMMV.
messages transmitted by computer over communications networks. The messages can be notes entered from an individual keyboard or electronic files stored in the computer or on a computer disk. They can be sent to one user at a time or broadcast to several users at the same time and usually take only a few minutes to arrive at their destination. Hence, e-mail is typically used to bypass regular postal service delivery (called snail mail by e-mail users) and to speed communications. Most computer networks have an e-mail system, although some are confined to a single computer network (as in an internal system within a small company), whereas others have gateways to other computer systems or networks, enabling the user to send messages anywhere to any system in the world. All on-line services and Internet service providers offer e-mail to subscribers. E-mail is fast, flexible, and reliable, and companies that are fully computerized make extensive use of it in the communication of internal and external messages, for relaying and confirming orders, sending press releases, announcing sales promotions, explaining price changes, updating scripts, confirming fund-raising pledges, offering camera-ready copy to publications, and a host of other business communications. An analysis in 1998 indicates that there are 25 million e-mail users sending 15 billion messages per year.
