Editing Email (section)

{{Short description|Mail sent using electronic means}}
{{For|the former company|Email Limited}}
{{redirect|Reply all|the podcast|Reply All (podcast){{!}}''Reply All'' (podcast)}}
{{pp-vandalism|small=yes}}
{{Use American English|date=October 2020}}
{{Use mdy dates|date=October 2020}}
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[[File: Evolution 36 mail.png|thumb|right|This screenshot shows the "Inbox" page of an [[email client]]; users can see new emails and take actions, such as reading, deleting, saving, or responding to these messages.]]
[[File:E-post från Wikipedia - 2019.jpg|thumb|When a "robot" on [[Wikipedia]] makes changes to image files, the uploader receives an email about the changes made.]]
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'''Electronic mail''' (usually shortened to '''email'''; alternatively hyphenated '''e-mail''') is a method of transmitting and receiving [[Digital media|digital messages]] using [[electronics|electronic]] devices over a [[computer network]]. It was conceived in the late–20th century as the digital version of, or counterpart to, [[mail]] (hence ''[[wikt:e-#Etymology 2|e-]] + mail''). Email is a ubiquitous and very widely used communication medium; in current use, an [[email address]] is often treated as a basic and necessary part of many processes in business, commerce, government, education, entertainment, and other spheres of daily life in most countries.

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Email operates across computer networks, primarily the [[Internet access|Internet]], and also [[local area network]]s. Today's email systems are based on a [[store-and-forward]] model. Email [[Server (computing)|servers]] accept, forward, deliver, and store messages. Neither the users nor their computers are required to be online simultaneously; they need to connect, typically to a [[Message transfer agent|mail server]] or a [[webmail]] interface to send or receive messages or download it.

Originally a text-only [[ASCII]] communications medium, Internet email was extended by [[Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions|MIME]] to carry text in expanded character sets and multimedia content such as images. [[International email]], with internationalized email addresses using [[UTF-8]], is standardized but not widely adopted.<ref name=first/>
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