E-Content of

Internet Technology and Web Design

Chapter : 6.4 Structure of an Email

Topic : 6.4.1 Email address

Structure of Email
• An Internet E-mail message consists of three components,

 Message envelope.

 Used to privately enclose the content of the E-mail.

 Message header.

 Used to determine where a message is sent, and also records the specific
path the message follows as it passes through each mail server.

 Consists of fields such as From, To, CC, Subject, Date, and other
information about the E-mail.

 Message body.

 Used to enter the text, images or attachments to recipient(s).

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 E-Content of
Internet Technology and Web Design

Chapter : 6.4 Structure of an Email

Topic : 6.4.2 Email header

Email address

• An E-mail address is same as postal address.

• E-mail address identifies an “E-mail box” to which E-mail messages are to be

delivered.

• An e-mail address is composed of several elements, for example

"[email protected]".

• The first part of all E-mail is user group or department of a company or

organization, the "@" is divider of E-mail address and to the right is the domain
name of the user belong to i.e. "example.com".

FIG 6.6: E-mail address

Domain name
• A domain name is a unique name that identifies a website and it serves as an
address, which is used to access the website.

• Domain names provide an easy way to remember internet address which is

translated into its numeric address (IP address) by the domain name system
(DNS).

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• Domain name is divided into three parts.

 Host-name, sub-domain: Indicates computer name or username.

 Second-level domain.

 Top-level domain: indicates the site hosting company is an

organization.

• Top-level domains are

 .gov - Government agencies

 .com - commercial business

 .edu - educational institutes

 .net - organizations that are non-profit.

 .int - International organizations like UNO, WHO etc.

 .in - India

User name
• To the left of the "@" character is the user name.

• The user name designates who at a domain is the owner of the E-mail address,
for example "rock".

Types of E-mail addressing

• There are actually three most common ways to establish a valid E-mail address.

• Creating a live E-mail account with mail provider like Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail &
etc.

• Creating a virtual mailbox, or E-mail forwarding feature.

• Creating a personal domain E-mail with user domain.

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 E-Content of
Internet Technology and Web Design

Chapter : 6.4 Structure of an Email

Topic : 6.4.2 Email header

Email header
• The header, a set of lines containing information about the message's
transportation, such as the sender's address, the recipient's address, or
timestamps showing when the message was sent by intermediary servers to the
transport agents (MTAs), which act as a mail sorting office.

• In an e-mail, the body (content text) is always preceded by header lines that
identify particular routing information of the message, including the sender,
recipient, date and subject.

• Some headers are mandatory, such as the FROM, TO and DATE headers.
Others are optional, but very commonly used, such as SUBJECT and CC.

• Other headers include the sending time stamps and the receiving time stamps of
all mail transfer agents that have received and sent the message.

• In other words, any time a message is transferred from one user to another (i.e.
when it is sent or forwarded), the message is date/time stamped by a mail
transfer agent (MTA) - a computer program or software agent that facilitates the
transfer of email message from one computer to another.

• This date/time stamp, like FROM, TO, and SUBJECT, becomes one of the many
headers that precede the body of an email.

Header characteristics

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• A single email header has some important characteristics, including perhaps the
most important part of an email - this is the KEY: VALUE pairs contained in the
header.

• Here is a breakdown of the most commonly used and viewed headers, and their
values:

 From: sender's name and email address

 To: recipient's name and email address

 Date: sent date/time of the email

 Subject: whatever text the sender entered in the Subject heading

before sending.

FIG 6.7: E-mail Header

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 E-Content of
Internet Technology and Web Design

Chapter : 6.4 Structure of an Email

Topic : 6.4.3 Message Body and Attachments

Message Body
• Message body contains the message, separated from the header by a line break.

• Used to enter the text, images or attachments to recipient(s).

Attachments
• An E-Mail attachment is a "File" that is attached to an E-Mail message.

• For example, attachments like a graphic, a spreadsheet, or a word processing

document can be attached to the mail message.

• Sending attachments can be a good way to transfer a copy of a file if the sender
and recipient have agreed on a format.

FIG 6.8: Message body and attachment

Tips for Sending Attachments

• There are many types of attachments that can be send via e-mail.

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• Not all E-Mail systems handle attachments in the same way.

• If user is not sure what types of files a recipient can view, it is a good idea to use
one of the following file types to send your attachment.

Plain text
• Save file without formatting options such as bold and underline. All word
processors and text editors should be able to read a plain text document.

RTF
• Rich Text Format is a document format that is readable by most word
processors.

• The RTF file is a plain text file representation of a formatted document.

• RTF includes codes that the recipient's word processor uses to recreate the
formatted document.

PDF
• Portable Document Format is a file format that preserves all of the fonts,
formatting, colors, and graphics of a document.

Size of the attachment

• Limited to E-Mail Gmail can attach up to 25MB or it can be updated to Google
drive.

• When user send an attachment, that the recipient may have a restriction (or) limit
to the size of the attachment they receive.

If needed to send the same document multiple times, rename the File attachment
name each time
• Multiple versions of the same document can become confusing and occasionally
user might send different version of the document than what user had expected.

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• A better way to manage multiple iterations of the same document is to change

rename the file name each time by adding a revision date and/ or time to the
filename.

• Each document name will be unique and it is easy to tell the most recent version
by name. Then the older versions can be deleted.

Common document type and attachment

• Microsoft Word .doc or .docx

• Microsoft Excel .xls or .xlsx

• Microsoft Power .ppt or .pps

• Word Perfect .wp

• Text only .txt

• Rich text format .rtf

• Portable Document format .pdf

• GIF Graphics .gif

• JPEG Graphics .jpg

• HTML Files .htm or .html

• Self-extracting Archive .sea

• Executable Files (Windows) .exe (only open if you know what it is)

• Visual Basic Script .vbs (only open if you know what it is).

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