From AptivateOER
- Introduction
- How to use this booklet
- Pictures
- Mouse
- Keyboard
- Desktop
- Window
- Browser
- Common Email Tasks
- Logging in
- Checking your email
- Composing and sending
- Replying to an email
- Reply all
- Forwarding an email
- Opening attachments
- Deleting email
- Things to Remember
- Spam
- Security and privacy
- Etiquette
- Glossary
- Glossary
Glossary
Email Training/Glossary
Contents |
[edit] 1 Glossary
[edit] 1.1 Email Terms
| Account | Your collection of received and sent emails is referred to as your 'account'. Because you can log into your email with a unique username and password, no one else can send and receive emails from your account. For the CAMA network email service, your username is your email address. |
| Attachment | An attachment is a file that is sent along with an email message. The file can be of any type (for example, a word processor document, an image, or an mp3). |
| Browser | The browser is the tool that you use to access the Internet, including web based email, like the email that CAMA has. Examples of browsers include Firefox, Internet Explorer and Safari. The browser allows you to navigate the Internet, displaying pages and allowing you to go back and forward, follow a hyperlink from one page to another, or enter an address on the URL text box. Therefore, in order to access the Internet, or your email, you will need to open the browser by clicking on its icon on the desktop. |
| Bcc | A Bcc (blind carbon copy) is a copy of an email message sent to a recipient whose email address does not appear in the message. This is in contrast to To and Cc recipients, whose addresses do appear in the respective header lines. Every recipient of the message can see all the To and Cc recipients, but does not know about Bcc recipients. To send an email to someone as Bcc, type their email address into the corresponding text box of the email you are sending. |
| Cc | This stands for 'carbon copy'. A copy of the email you are sending will go to the email addresses you enter into the Cc field, as well as the addresses you enter into the 'To' field. |
| Email Address | Everyone with an email account has their own email address. This needs to be used to send and receive emails, not simply the person's name. Email addresses look like this: 
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| File | A file is an object stored on the computer, like a worksheet, form, or a picture. When emailing, you might encounter files as attachments to an email. The ending to their names tells you what kind of file they are. Files ending in .jpg , .png, .gif are images. Files ending in .odt, .doc, .pdf might be documents like worksheets, articles, or forms. |
| Firefox | Firefox is a popular browser. It is used in the CAMA centre. Its icon looks like this:
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| Folder | A folder in your email account is a location where your received or sent email is stored. Your Inbox, for example, is a folder into which you receive email. Your Sent folder, is where the emails that you have written and sent to someone else are stored. To look at the contents of a folder, you place the mouse pointer over the link and click once with the left button. |
| Forward | Sometimes, you might want to send an email that someone has sent you, on to someone else. This is called 'forwarding'. For example, your sister might have sent you an email from Lusaka saying when she is next going to visit. You might want your aunt to read this too. After clicking on the 'Forward' link that is displayed when you are reading your sister's email, the email and its header will be copied into a new email body text box. You can then enter the email address of the person you want to email and press send. |
| Hyperlink | [[Image:]]This is sometimes shortened to just 'link'. A link is something on the screen that you click with the left mouse button on to go to another page, which will then be displayed in your window. You can tell that something is a link because when you place your pointer over it, your pointer will turn into a pointing hand, rather than an arrow, like this:
Often links might be a different colour and might become underlined. |
| Inbox | Your Inbox is the folder of your email account where all of the emails that people send you are stored. This is where you check to see if you have any new emails. |
| Log in | Some web pages, including that of your email account, are private. That is, they are not accessible to just anyone that enters the URL. Your email account is unique and private to you. Therefore, you need to provide your username (for your CAMA email, this is your email address) and password to identify your own email account. These are typed into the text boxes on the homepage of your email service.
Your password is secret and therefore when you type it in, the actual letters don't appear in case anyone is watching you as you type. This process is known as 'logging in'. Sometimes the username and password then become referred to as the 'log-on' or 'log-in'. |
| Log out | When you are finished using your email, you need to 'log out' of your account, just as you had to 'log in'. This prevents others from looking at your email account. You can log out by left clicking once on the Log Out link on the page. |
| Message Body | The message body content of your email is where the person sending the email writes their message. This is the lower, larger text box of your email window. |
| Message Header | The message header gives information about the email: sender, date and time sent, subject line, and other addresses the email is sent to. This information is at the top of your email window when you have the email open. |
| Password | This is a secret word or code that only you know. You use it to log in to your email account, along with your email address, so that it is private from other people. When you type it in, the actual letters often do not appear in case someone is watching your screen while you log in. |
| Reply | If you want to respond to an email that someone has sent you, you can use 'Reply' instead of using the 'Compose' link to write and send your email. When you have the page with the email you are replying to open, you will find a link called 'Reply'. Clicking on this will bring up a new page where you can write and send your response, but it will already have the email address of the recipient filled in, the subject line will be preceded by 'Re:', and the original email will be copied into the message body. This makes it easier to respond directly to questions. |
| Reply All | Sometimes, you might have been sent an email that has also been sent to other people. You can tell when this is the case, because there will be other email addresses in the 'To:' or 'Cc' boxes in the email header. If you want to respond to the email with information that you want everyone who has been sent it to see, you can can on the 'Reply All' link instead of the 'Reply' link. This means that everyone's email addresses will automatically be copied into the 'To' and 'Cc' boxes of your message. |
| Send | When you are ready for your email message to go off to its recipient, you can 'send' it. There is a button at the bottom of where you have composed your email called 'Send'. |
| Spam | Spam is an email message that you did not ask for and do not want from somebody you do not know, who wants to sell you something. Most spam is sent in bulk to a large number of email addresses and advertises some product or tries to scam you out of money. |
| Subject | You will find a text box in the email header marked 'Subject'. You should enter a few words describing your message into this line. When you receive an email in your Inbox, you will see that the Subject is displayed before you open the email, along with who sent the email and when it was sent. |
| URL | Every single page on the Internet has its own URL, or its 'web address'. To reach a web page, you type its URL into the text box at the top and centre of your browser window and press the return key. URLs begin with 'http://' . |
| Username | A username is one half of the information you need to log-in, along with your password. In your email programme, your username is your email address. On some other email programmes you might encounter, however, this will be phrased as 'username' or 'name'. |
[edit] 1.2 Computer Hardware
| Cable | Rubber/plastic coated wire connecting different devices to each other and the computer. |
| Key | A button on the keyboard that types a letter, punctuation, number, or performs a function. |
| Keyboard | Device consisting of keys, which you use to type and to give commands to the computer. It is connected by a cable to the computer. |
| Mouse | Rounded, plastic device, usually with two buttons at the top, connected to the computer by a cable. You use the mouse to move the pointer on the screen and to click on things on the screen. |
| Screen | The screen is a flat-fronted, rectangular device that displays pictures. |
[edit] 1.3 Navigation
| Button | Buttons on the screen look like a real button that you press might. Here is an example of the Log in button:
Holding the mouse pointer over a button and clicking once with the left button of the mouse will make something happen. |
| Click | 'Clicking' is how you select whatever your mouse is held over on the screen. To click with the mouse, you press the mouse button down and then release it quickly. Usually, when you are clicking to open an application, you are using the left mouse button, not the right. |
| Double-click | This is like clicking except that you click twice in a row, quickly one after the other. Sometimes, you need to double click on an icon for something to happen. |
| Cursor | The cursor is a flashing vertical line that appears when you have clicked on the screen within an area, a text box, where you can type. This might be, for example, in the text box next to the 'To:' where you type in an email address when you are writing an email. The cursor shows you where letters will start to appear when you are typing. |
| Desktop | The desktop is the area displayed on the screen, most easily seen when all other windows are closed. There might be icons on the desktop that you can click on. |
| Icon | An icon is a small picture or symbol on the screen. When you click or double-click on it, something will happen. For example, the Firefox web browser icon is a picture of a fox wrapped around a globe. When you click on it, Firefox will open and you can use it. Here's the Firefox icon:
[[Image:]] |
| Maximise | Sometimes you might want to make a window on your screen bigger. To do this, you need to click on a symbol that looks like this:
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| Menu | When you click on a word on the tool bar, a menu appears, sometimes called a 'drop-down menu'. The menu lists a number of things that you can do on the application you are using. For example, if you click on 'File' while you are using Firefox, a menu appears:
If you want to open a new window, you can click on this option in the menu and a new Firefox window will open. |
| Minimise | At the top right corner of a window on the screen, you will see a symbol that looks like this:
This example is of a minimised Firefox window that displays the Google web page. |
| Pointer | You will see a little arrow on the screen like this:
This is the pointer and it moves around the screen as you move the mouse. Sometimes, when you position the pointer over a button or piece of text on the screen, you will notice that the arrow turns into a little pointing hand like this: [[Image:]] This means that what your pointer is positioned over is a link and clicking on it will make something happen. |
| Scroll Bar | [[Image:]]Sometimes the whole picture cannot fit onto the screen. Therefore, you need to 'scroll' up and down, or left and right, to read all of the information. To scroll up and down find the bar on the right side of the window you are looking at with the arrows at the top and the bottom. Click on the bar but don't release the mouse button (keep pressing it down) and then move the mouse up and down. You can also click on the up and down arrows. |
| Text box | This is where you type words on the screen. Usually, you will see a rectangular white box on the screen. When you click inside it, a flashing vertical line appears. This means that you can use the keyboard to type inside the box. |
| Tool Bar | At the top of a window you open, you will see a grey bar with words like 'File' 'Edit' and others. This bar is called the 'Tool bar'.
When you click on one of the words, a menu appears. |
| Window | A window is a rectangular area on your screen displaying information. For example, when you open Firefox, a rectangle appears. You can have more than one window open at the same time. The one at the front is the window in which you are currently working. To look at what is in another window, you just need to click on it. Most windows can be resized, moved, hidden, restored, and closed at will. |
