Email Jargon: 
 Typing the Talk

Email has become a linguistic community of its own.  Often, new users are excluded from electronic mail communities because they do not know the jargon or the etiquette of the activity.  This is an attempt to bring you up to speed on both.

• Acknowledgement You should reply to all email messages, only if you are just acknowledging that you received the original message.  The only time that you should not automatically reply is when you are receiving mail from a mailing list or from an auto-responder.
• auto-responder (also known as a mail-bot) this is a software package that sends a response to you when you sign up for an online service such as email, mailing lists, or enter contests.  Usually, the message begins with "You should not reply to this message..."
• Bounced - This simply means that the email you sent, for what ever reason, was not delivered but was instead returned to you with a message which is mostly written in geek-type.
• CAPITAL LETTERS- when you send an email (or converse in a chat room) and you type in all capital letters, it means that you are SCREAMING.  Not a polite behavior.
• Chain mail - This occurs when a message is repeatedly forwarded to new recipients.  Most commonly jokes or virus warnings these messages grow in size each time they are forwarded and they eat up a great deal of bandwidth.  Do not forward chains.  IF you think the message is worthy of forwarding, merely copy (Ctrl-C) the body of the message and construct a new email.  This removes all the FWD TO:   header material.
• FAQ -Frequently Asked Questions
• Flaming - Flaming is a practice the occurs, predominantly, in mailing lists or chat rooms.  Flames are messages that are abusive, angry, nasty, and/or combative.  Flames are usually a reply to a previous email.  If you read an email that makes you angry...wait for an hour or two to cool down before responding.  Flaming is the number one reason most people get banned from mailing lists or chatrooms. 
• Message Archive - Another practice of mailing lists where electronic messages are stored on a server so that members may retrieve them at a later date.
• Missed Signals.  This is a result of "paralanguage;" those aspects of communication which do not occur in the literal text of what we "say."  Body language, tone, facial expressions, proxemics.  Because of the nature of electronic communication, only the text of the message can be communicated.  Thus, any paralanguage must be included in the message.  For instance if you type "I hate u" in an email....it carries one meaning.  That meaning is changed when you type "I hate u...he said, with the grin that he always has on his face after losing a close game to a good competitor."
• Netiquette - Codes of behavior for communicating in any electronic forum.
• permanence - Unlike telephone calls both electronic mail and chat rooms leave a permanent record somewhere.  Thus, they are as incriminating and binding as business letters.
• Phishing - Email (and now phone calls) sent from spammers who send out messages which pretend to be from a legitimate company who has a legitimate need for you to give them your credit card numbers, social security number, bank account numbers.....you get the idea.
• privacy - While email or chat may seem private...It's not.  It can be intercepted and read at any point in the chain.  So, if you wouldn't write it on the front page of the paper...don't put it in an electronic message.
• responding - When you respond to an email, be sure to reference what you are responding to. 
• Sender - Identify yourself, by name, in the message.  The receiver may not always know who "shuggalips@bunniwerks.zzn.com" is in reality.  You really should think about the credibility of your email "handle," do you really want to put "Stunna69@rightnow.com" on your resume?"
• Spam - Unsolicited, bulk email.  The electronic version of junk mail.
• Spoofing - pretending to be someone you aren't. 
• Subject- Every email program includes a subject field.  Be sure to put information in that field that lets the receiver know what the message is about.  Blank subject fields are often automatically discarded as spam.