When you talk to a friend at school, the way you stand or the expression on your face helps them understand what you are really saying. You may have heard that called body language. But what about when you talk to someone on the phone? The only clue they have to your meaining is what you say and how you say it. Can you remember any times you have been talking on the phone and someone has misunderstood your meaning?

What about when you write a letter? In a letter, the reader can't see your body language or hear your voice. All they can do is read your words. Well, it can be an even bigger problem when you are just writing--whether it is a letter on paper or e-mail on the screen. Let me see if I can give you an example. Read the following two words.

Yeah, right.

How many meanings can you think of for those two words?

• "Yeah, right" could mean...what you've said is true.
• "Yeah, right" could mean...you've got to be kidding.
• "Yeah, right" could also mean...yes, turn right.

The point is that you have to be really careful when you write e-mail because you don't want someone to misunderstand what you have said and possiblly get mad! Right? Yeah, right! When people get mad at each other on the Internet and start sending lots of angry messages back and forth it is called a flame war.

So how do you avoid being misuderstood and causing a flame war? The easiest way is to be clear in what you say and avoid sarcasm. My mother's words still ring in my ears..."If you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all." Thanks, Mom. That was good advice.

People usually try to keep e-mail messages short. One way to do this and cut down on how much you have to type is to use abbreviations. Often in an e-mail message you will see BTW, CU, or some other shorthand. Can you guess what these mean? Check your answer with the list in the following table.

ONE THING YOU NEVER WANT TO DO IS TYPE AN ENTIRE MESSAGE OR A SENTENCE IN ALL CAPITAL LETTERS LIKE THIS. Did that sentence get your attention? In e-mail, typing in all capital letters is the same thing as SHOUTING! Also, don't use profanity. 'Nuff said on that, let's move on.

Finally, we come to emoticons--emotional icons. An icon is just a picture or symbol that represents something. For example, the Print button is an icon. The little printer symbol lets you know that if you click on the button, something will print out. Unfortunately, in most e-mail messages, you can't include a big graphic symbol like the Print button. So some clever person came up with emoticons--a way to use the basic punctuation marks like a colon, the dash, or a parenthesis to symbolize an emotion like smiling or frowning. Some of the more common emoticons are shown in the table below. At first, these may not look like anything to you unless you know the trick. To see an emoticon you hafe to tilt your head to the left. When you do that, you should see something that resembles a face--two eyes and a mouth. Sometimes these little emoticons are called smileys. Can you tell why? Some common emoticons are shown in the following table.OK...so now your are aware of some of the things to avoid when sending e-mail. Probably the best advice I can give you is to stop and think about what you have said before you push the Send button. Once the message has been sent, you can't take it back. Use emoticons (smileys) and abbreviations if it will help make the meaing of your message easier to understand.

:-)

There are many interesting places to visit out on the World Wide Web. Click on the WWW Hot Spot icon and visit one now. Remember, when you move the cursor over a hot spot, it changes from an arrow to a hand pointing. To select the hot spot, just click on top of it with the mouse. In your e-mail message for this assignment, let me know something you learned from visiting this site.

Competencies: After completing this assignment, what should you know and be able to do? You should be comfortable with sending and reading e-mail and you should know several ways to make your messages clear so that you can void starting flame wars.