ICSI Notes: Concept of E-Correspondence | Business Communication for CSEET PDF Download

 Page 1


134
CSEET Reference Reading Material - I Business Communication
CONCEPT OF E-CORRESPONDENCE
Introduction
Today in 21st century globalized world, the uses and needs for the 24 hours availability system of internet 
have been unprecedented.
Professionals, non-professionals, experts or students, we are all turning increasingly to the internet in our 
daily lives. Whether we want to find educational openings abroad, do banking operations online, find 
research material on any issue, send corporate e-mails, internet is the place where we go most often. 
From the trivial to the highly complex, we look for answers to most of our questions in the vast ocean of 
knowledge called World Wide Web (www).
The World Wide Web is a system of interlinked hypertext documents accessed via the Internet. With a 
web browser, one can view web pages that contain text, images, videos, and other multimedia and 
navigate among them via hyperlinks.
Many people use the terms Internet and World Wide Web interchangeably, but in fact these two terms 
are not synonymous. The Internet and the Web are two separate but related things.
What is Web?
The World Wide Web, or simply Web, is a way of accessing information over the medium of the Internet. 
It is an information-sharing model that is built on top of the Internet. The Web uses the HTTP protocol 
(one of the languages spoken over the Internet) to transmit data. Web services, which use HTTP to allow 
applications to communicate in order to exchange business logic, use the Web to share information. 
The Web also utilizes browsers, such as Google Chrome, Internet Explorer or Firefox to access Web 
documents called Web pages that are linked to one another via hyperlinks. Web documents also 
contain graphics, sounds, text and video.
The Web is just one of the ways through which information can be disseminated over the Internet. The 
Internet, not the Web, is also used for e-mail. So the Web is just part of the Internet, albeit a large part, 
but the two terms are not synonymous and should not be confused.
What is Browser?
A Web browser is software application that enables you to find, retrieve, and display information 
available on the World Wide Web (WWW). Browser also allows you to traverse information resources on 
the WWW. The information on the Web is organized and formatted using tags of a Markup language 
called Hypertext Markup Language or HTML. A web browser converts the HTML tags and their content 
into a formatted display of information. Thus, a web browser allows you to see the rich web contents 
from a website. Some of the popular web browsers are - Google Chrome, Internet Explorer, Mozilla 
Firefox, Safari and Opera.
A brief description about some of these interactions/buttons is as follows:
 • Back/Forward Buttons : Back button can be used by you for going back to the previously visited 
web page whereas the Forward button is used to visit the nextpage (if you are not on the most 
recent page visited by you, this may happen when you have pressed the back button at least 
once).
Page 2


134
CSEET Reference Reading Material - I Business Communication
CONCEPT OF E-CORRESPONDENCE
Introduction
Today in 21st century globalized world, the uses and needs for the 24 hours availability system of internet 
have been unprecedented.
Professionals, non-professionals, experts or students, we are all turning increasingly to the internet in our 
daily lives. Whether we want to find educational openings abroad, do banking operations online, find 
research material on any issue, send corporate e-mails, internet is the place where we go most often. 
From the trivial to the highly complex, we look for answers to most of our questions in the vast ocean of 
knowledge called World Wide Web (www).
The World Wide Web is a system of interlinked hypertext documents accessed via the Internet. With a 
web browser, one can view web pages that contain text, images, videos, and other multimedia and 
navigate among them via hyperlinks.
Many people use the terms Internet and World Wide Web interchangeably, but in fact these two terms 
are not synonymous. The Internet and the Web are two separate but related things.
What is Web?
The World Wide Web, or simply Web, is a way of accessing information over the medium of the Internet. 
It is an information-sharing model that is built on top of the Internet. The Web uses the HTTP protocol 
(one of the languages spoken over the Internet) to transmit data. Web services, which use HTTP to allow 
applications to communicate in order to exchange business logic, use the Web to share information. 
The Web also utilizes browsers, such as Google Chrome, Internet Explorer or Firefox to access Web 
documents called Web pages that are linked to one another via hyperlinks. Web documents also 
contain graphics, sounds, text and video.
The Web is just one of the ways through which information can be disseminated over the Internet. The 
Internet, not the Web, is also used for e-mail. So the Web is just part of the Internet, albeit a large part, 
but the two terms are not synonymous and should not be confused.
What is Browser?
A Web browser is software application that enables you to find, retrieve, and display information 
available on the World Wide Web (WWW). Browser also allows you to traverse information resources on 
the WWW. The information on the Web is organized and formatted using tags of a Markup language 
called Hypertext Markup Language or HTML. A web browser converts the HTML tags and their content 
into a formatted display of information. Thus, a web browser allows you to see the rich web contents 
from a website. Some of the popular web browsers are - Google Chrome, Internet Explorer, Mozilla 
Firefox, Safari and Opera.
A brief description about some of these interactions/buttons is as follows:
 • Back/Forward Buttons : Back button can be used by you for going back to the previously visited 
web page whereas the Forward button is used to visit the nextpage (if you are not on the most 
recent page visited by you, this may happen when you have pressed the back button at least 
once).
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Business Communication Lesson 3 - Business Correspondence
 • Tab : It allows you to view multiple web pages in the same browser without opening a new 
browser session.
 • Address bar : Also known as URL Bar is a place where you can type the web page address 
that you want to retrieve from the web address. It also displays the address of the web page 
currently being visited by you.
 • Recent History : This shows the links to the web pages previously visited by you.
 • Refresh : This is also called as reload button. It reloads the current web page.
 • Stop : It cancels loading of the current web page. This button is used when the page is in the 
loading state.
 • Home : This button will bring you back to the home page of your website. Home page is the first 
page of any website.
 • Search : Search box allows any term to be searched by the search engine from the web. It can 
also be used for searching of contents from the website visiting.
What is Internet?
The Internet is the network of networks and is used for many applications. Internet allows you to share 
resources and applications with ease. The Internet can carry any digital signals such as text, graphics, 
sound, video and animation. Today, Internet has thousands of networks and millions of users, using 
many services. The Internet is a massive network of networks - a networking infrastructure. It connects 
millions of computers together globally forming a network in which any computer can communicate 
with any other computer as long as they are both connected to the Internet. Information that travels 
over the Internet does so via a variety of languages known as protocols. The Internet uses TCP/IP as its 
basic protocol on which many more application level protocols have been developed.
The terms Internet and World Wide Web are often used in everyday speech without much distinction. 
The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks. In contrast, the Web is one of the 
services that runs on the Internet. It is a collection of textual documents and other resources, linked by 
hyperlinks and URLs, transmitted by web browsers and web servers. In short, the Web can be thought of 
as an application “running” on the Internet.
Viewing a web page on the World Wide Web normally begins either by typing the URL of the page into 
a web browser or by following a hyperlink to that page or resource. The web browser then initiates a 
series of communication messages, behind the scenes, in order to fetch and display it.
“The letters written by one party to another, and the answers thereto, make what is called the 
correspondence of the parties. Such correspondence if done through electronic signals via internet is 
called E-correspondence.”
What is E-Correspondence?
E-Correspondence is commonly known as ‘email-correspondence’ or ‘electronic correspondence’. 
It is an electronic method of providing you with important information on your email address. You 
must supply a valid email address in order to receive information via email. For example: johndoe@
company.com.
Page 3


134
CSEET Reference Reading Material - I Business Communication
CONCEPT OF E-CORRESPONDENCE
Introduction
Today in 21st century globalized world, the uses and needs for the 24 hours availability system of internet 
have been unprecedented.
Professionals, non-professionals, experts or students, we are all turning increasingly to the internet in our 
daily lives. Whether we want to find educational openings abroad, do banking operations online, find 
research material on any issue, send corporate e-mails, internet is the place where we go most often. 
From the trivial to the highly complex, we look for answers to most of our questions in the vast ocean of 
knowledge called World Wide Web (www).
The World Wide Web is a system of interlinked hypertext documents accessed via the Internet. With a 
web browser, one can view web pages that contain text, images, videos, and other multimedia and 
navigate among them via hyperlinks.
Many people use the terms Internet and World Wide Web interchangeably, but in fact these two terms 
are not synonymous. The Internet and the Web are two separate but related things.
What is Web?
The World Wide Web, or simply Web, is a way of accessing information over the medium of the Internet. 
It is an information-sharing model that is built on top of the Internet. The Web uses the HTTP protocol 
(one of the languages spoken over the Internet) to transmit data. Web services, which use HTTP to allow 
applications to communicate in order to exchange business logic, use the Web to share information. 
The Web also utilizes browsers, such as Google Chrome, Internet Explorer or Firefox to access Web 
documents called Web pages that are linked to one another via hyperlinks. Web documents also 
contain graphics, sounds, text and video.
The Web is just one of the ways through which information can be disseminated over the Internet. The 
Internet, not the Web, is also used for e-mail. So the Web is just part of the Internet, albeit a large part, 
but the two terms are not synonymous and should not be confused.
What is Browser?
A Web browser is software application that enables you to find, retrieve, and display information 
available on the World Wide Web (WWW). Browser also allows you to traverse information resources on 
the WWW. The information on the Web is organized and formatted using tags of a Markup language 
called Hypertext Markup Language or HTML. A web browser converts the HTML tags and their content 
into a formatted display of information. Thus, a web browser allows you to see the rich web contents 
from a website. Some of the popular web browsers are - Google Chrome, Internet Explorer, Mozilla 
Firefox, Safari and Opera.
A brief description about some of these interactions/buttons is as follows:
 • Back/Forward Buttons : Back button can be used by you for going back to the previously visited 
web page whereas the Forward button is used to visit the nextpage (if you are not on the most 
recent page visited by you, this may happen when you have pressed the back button at least 
once).
135
Business Communication Lesson 3 - Business Correspondence
 • Tab : It allows you to view multiple web pages in the same browser without opening a new 
browser session.
 • Address bar : Also known as URL Bar is a place where you can type the web page address 
that you want to retrieve from the web address. It also displays the address of the web page 
currently being visited by you.
 • Recent History : This shows the links to the web pages previously visited by you.
 • Refresh : This is also called as reload button. It reloads the current web page.
 • Stop : It cancels loading of the current web page. This button is used when the page is in the 
loading state.
 • Home : This button will bring you back to the home page of your website. Home page is the first 
page of any website.
 • Search : Search box allows any term to be searched by the search engine from the web. It can 
also be used for searching of contents from the website visiting.
What is Internet?
The Internet is the network of networks and is used for many applications. Internet allows you to share 
resources and applications with ease. The Internet can carry any digital signals such as text, graphics, 
sound, video and animation. Today, Internet has thousands of networks and millions of users, using 
many services. The Internet is a massive network of networks - a networking infrastructure. It connects 
millions of computers together globally forming a network in which any computer can communicate 
with any other computer as long as they are both connected to the Internet. Information that travels 
over the Internet does so via a variety of languages known as protocols. The Internet uses TCP/IP as its 
basic protocol on which many more application level protocols have been developed.
The terms Internet and World Wide Web are often used in everyday speech without much distinction. 
The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks. In contrast, the Web is one of the 
services that runs on the Internet. It is a collection of textual documents and other resources, linked by 
hyperlinks and URLs, transmitted by web browsers and web servers. In short, the Web can be thought of 
as an application “running” on the Internet.
Viewing a web page on the World Wide Web normally begins either by typing the URL of the page into 
a web browser or by following a hyperlink to that page or resource. The web browser then initiates a 
series of communication messages, behind the scenes, in order to fetch and display it.
“The letters written by one party to another, and the answers thereto, make what is called the 
correspondence of the parties. Such correspondence if done through electronic signals via internet is 
called E-correspondence.”
What is E-Correspondence?
E-Correspondence is commonly known as ‘email-correspondence’ or ‘electronic correspondence’. 
It is an electronic method of providing you with important information on your email address. You 
must supply a valid email address in order to receive information via email. For example: johndoe@
company.com.
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CSEET Reference Reading Material - I Business Communication
Concept of Email
“Electronic mail” or “e-mail” as it is commonly called is the process of sending or receiving a computer 
file or message by computer modem over telephone wires to a pre-selected “mail box” or “address” on 
another computer. E-mail can also be sent automatically to a large number of electronic addresses via 
mailing lists (through ‘mail-merge’ option). E-mail messages can range from the simplest correspondence 
to business presentations, engineering blueprints, book chapters, or detailed contracts. Graphics, files of 
artwork or photography can be transmitted via this technology as well, though text messages comprise 
the vast majority of e-mail transmissions.
Today, e-mail stands as a central component of business communication, both within business 
enterprises and between business enterprises, because of the many advantages it offers over regular 
mail in terms of efficiency, speed, and 24-hour availability. These characteristics have made electronic 
mail a truly ubiquitous presence across the globe. Indeed, in terms of sheer volume, more than 536 
billion pieces of e-mail were delivered in the United States in 1999, according to the eMarketer Internet 
research firm. Moreover, the eMarketer estimates that in 2000 the number of active e-mail users in 
America reached 111 million.
Since e-mail has emerged as such an important method of business communication in recent years, it 
is important for small business owners to know how to use this technology effectively. Towards that end, 
consultants generally recommend that small business owners and entrepreneurs should select and 
shape such e-mail packages that emphasize convenience and ease of use.
Electronic mail, known commonly by its abbreviation ‘email’, is probably the most used medium of 
communication today. 50 years ago, had someone said that it would be possible to instantly deliver 
documents to a recipient sitting halfway across the globe, he would have been a laughing stock. But, 
email came, saw and conquered the World Wide Web. Today, with email, there’s so much more than 
just written text communication. Ability of the email to securely forward multimedia, photos, software, 
etc. has made it very popular. It’s rightly said that ‘necessity is the mother of all inventions’, and we 
humans have always found a way whenever the need arose. The history of email communication is 
very interesting and intriguing.
History of Email
In 1965, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) was the first to demonstrate the use of the first 
email system known as MAILBOX.
The history of email addresses can also be attributed to Tomlinson. He chose the ‘@’ symbol to provide 
an addressing standard in the form of “user@host”, which is in use till date. This is why Tomlinson is called 
the ‘father of email’ and is credited with its invention.
By 1974, email in its improved form was being used by the US military. By 1975, efforts to organize the 
email bore fruit. A general operating area, known as email account, was created for users who wanted 
to avail the email service. Access controlling was done by giving the user a secret password, which only 
he/she would know. Separate folders were created depending on the purpose. Inbox for incoming 
messages and outbox for outgoing messages.
The year 1976 was a watershed year in the history of email marketing. Email service was being offered 
in commercial packages and per-minute charges were applicable to those using these services. This 
led to the requirement for offline reading, which meant that users could then download their emails on 
to their personal computers, and read them leisurely without using and paying for the airtime. This led 
to the development of applications, which were similar to what Microsoft Outlook does today.
Page 4


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CSEET Reference Reading Material - I Business Communication
CONCEPT OF E-CORRESPONDENCE
Introduction
Today in 21st century globalized world, the uses and needs for the 24 hours availability system of internet 
have been unprecedented.
Professionals, non-professionals, experts or students, we are all turning increasingly to the internet in our 
daily lives. Whether we want to find educational openings abroad, do banking operations online, find 
research material on any issue, send corporate e-mails, internet is the place where we go most often. 
From the trivial to the highly complex, we look for answers to most of our questions in the vast ocean of 
knowledge called World Wide Web (www).
The World Wide Web is a system of interlinked hypertext documents accessed via the Internet. With a 
web browser, one can view web pages that contain text, images, videos, and other multimedia and 
navigate among them via hyperlinks.
Many people use the terms Internet and World Wide Web interchangeably, but in fact these two terms 
are not synonymous. The Internet and the Web are two separate but related things.
What is Web?
The World Wide Web, or simply Web, is a way of accessing information over the medium of the Internet. 
It is an information-sharing model that is built on top of the Internet. The Web uses the HTTP protocol 
(one of the languages spoken over the Internet) to transmit data. Web services, which use HTTP to allow 
applications to communicate in order to exchange business logic, use the Web to share information. 
The Web also utilizes browsers, such as Google Chrome, Internet Explorer or Firefox to access Web 
documents called Web pages that are linked to one another via hyperlinks. Web documents also 
contain graphics, sounds, text and video.
The Web is just one of the ways through which information can be disseminated over the Internet. The 
Internet, not the Web, is also used for e-mail. So the Web is just part of the Internet, albeit a large part, 
but the two terms are not synonymous and should not be confused.
What is Browser?
A Web browser is software application that enables you to find, retrieve, and display information 
available on the World Wide Web (WWW). Browser also allows you to traverse information resources on 
the WWW. The information on the Web is organized and formatted using tags of a Markup language 
called Hypertext Markup Language or HTML. A web browser converts the HTML tags and their content 
into a formatted display of information. Thus, a web browser allows you to see the rich web contents 
from a website. Some of the popular web browsers are - Google Chrome, Internet Explorer, Mozilla 
Firefox, Safari and Opera.
A brief description about some of these interactions/buttons is as follows:
 • Back/Forward Buttons : Back button can be used by you for going back to the previously visited 
web page whereas the Forward button is used to visit the nextpage (if you are not on the most 
recent page visited by you, this may happen when you have pressed the back button at least 
once).
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Business Communication Lesson 3 - Business Correspondence
 • Tab : It allows you to view multiple web pages in the same browser without opening a new 
browser session.
 • Address bar : Also known as URL Bar is a place where you can type the web page address 
that you want to retrieve from the web address. It also displays the address of the web page 
currently being visited by you.
 • Recent History : This shows the links to the web pages previously visited by you.
 • Refresh : This is also called as reload button. It reloads the current web page.
 • Stop : It cancels loading of the current web page. This button is used when the page is in the 
loading state.
 • Home : This button will bring you back to the home page of your website. Home page is the first 
page of any website.
 • Search : Search box allows any term to be searched by the search engine from the web. It can 
also be used for searching of contents from the website visiting.
What is Internet?
The Internet is the network of networks and is used for many applications. Internet allows you to share 
resources and applications with ease. The Internet can carry any digital signals such as text, graphics, 
sound, video and animation. Today, Internet has thousands of networks and millions of users, using 
many services. The Internet is a massive network of networks - a networking infrastructure. It connects 
millions of computers together globally forming a network in which any computer can communicate 
with any other computer as long as they are both connected to the Internet. Information that travels 
over the Internet does so via a variety of languages known as protocols. The Internet uses TCP/IP as its 
basic protocol on which many more application level protocols have been developed.
The terms Internet and World Wide Web are often used in everyday speech without much distinction. 
The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks. In contrast, the Web is one of the 
services that runs on the Internet. It is a collection of textual documents and other resources, linked by 
hyperlinks and URLs, transmitted by web browsers and web servers. In short, the Web can be thought of 
as an application “running” on the Internet.
Viewing a web page on the World Wide Web normally begins either by typing the URL of the page into 
a web browser or by following a hyperlink to that page or resource. The web browser then initiates a 
series of communication messages, behind the scenes, in order to fetch and display it.
“The letters written by one party to another, and the answers thereto, make what is called the 
correspondence of the parties. Such correspondence if done through electronic signals via internet is 
called E-correspondence.”
What is E-Correspondence?
E-Correspondence is commonly known as ‘email-correspondence’ or ‘electronic correspondence’. 
It is an electronic method of providing you with important information on your email address. You 
must supply a valid email address in order to receive information via email. For example: johndoe@
company.com.
136
CSEET Reference Reading Material - I Business Communication
Concept of Email
“Electronic mail” or “e-mail” as it is commonly called is the process of sending or receiving a computer 
file or message by computer modem over telephone wires to a pre-selected “mail box” or “address” on 
another computer. E-mail can also be sent automatically to a large number of electronic addresses via 
mailing lists (through ‘mail-merge’ option). E-mail messages can range from the simplest correspondence 
to business presentations, engineering blueprints, book chapters, or detailed contracts. Graphics, files of 
artwork or photography can be transmitted via this technology as well, though text messages comprise 
the vast majority of e-mail transmissions.
Today, e-mail stands as a central component of business communication, both within business 
enterprises and between business enterprises, because of the many advantages it offers over regular 
mail in terms of efficiency, speed, and 24-hour availability. These characteristics have made electronic 
mail a truly ubiquitous presence across the globe. Indeed, in terms of sheer volume, more than 536 
billion pieces of e-mail were delivered in the United States in 1999, according to the eMarketer Internet 
research firm. Moreover, the eMarketer estimates that in 2000 the number of active e-mail users in 
America reached 111 million.
Since e-mail has emerged as such an important method of business communication in recent years, it 
is important for small business owners to know how to use this technology effectively. Towards that end, 
consultants generally recommend that small business owners and entrepreneurs should select and 
shape such e-mail packages that emphasize convenience and ease of use.
Electronic mail, known commonly by its abbreviation ‘email’, is probably the most used medium of 
communication today. 50 years ago, had someone said that it would be possible to instantly deliver 
documents to a recipient sitting halfway across the globe, he would have been a laughing stock. But, 
email came, saw and conquered the World Wide Web. Today, with email, there’s so much more than 
just written text communication. Ability of the email to securely forward multimedia, photos, software, 
etc. has made it very popular. It’s rightly said that ‘necessity is the mother of all inventions’, and we 
humans have always found a way whenever the need arose. The history of email communication is 
very interesting and intriguing.
History of Email
In 1965, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) was the first to demonstrate the use of the first 
email system known as MAILBOX.
The history of email addresses can also be attributed to Tomlinson. He chose the ‘@’ symbol to provide 
an addressing standard in the form of “user@host”, which is in use till date. This is why Tomlinson is called 
the ‘father of email’ and is credited with its invention.
By 1974, email in its improved form was being used by the US military. By 1975, efforts to organize the 
email bore fruit. A general operating area, known as email account, was created for users who wanted 
to avail the email service. Access controlling was done by giving the user a secret password, which only 
he/she would know. Separate folders were created depending on the purpose. Inbox for incoming 
messages and outbox for outgoing messages.
The year 1976 was a watershed year in the history of email marketing. Email service was being offered 
in commercial packages and per-minute charges were applicable to those using these services. This 
led to the requirement for offline reading, which meant that users could then download their emails on 
to their personal computers, and read them leisurely without using and paying for the airtime. This led 
to the development of applications, which were similar to what Microsoft Outlook does today.
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Business Communication Lesson 3 - Business Correspondence
Requirement for protocols was felt almost immediately, and in 1972 file transfer protocol (FTP) was put in 
use to send email messages. The main drawback here was that FTP created a separate mail for every 
recipient and then dispatched it, which resulted in the loss of precious memory space. This prompted 
the creation of the more efficient SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) in the early 1980s, which became 
a standard protocol to be used in sending email messages. But the initial versions of SMTP failed to 
control the cases of forgery and proved to be a naive protocol in the verification of the authenticity of 
a user. Email viruses, worms and spammers began exploiting these loopholes in SMTP, and even though 
many new and improved versions have been released, this problem continues to be addressed till 
date.
If SMTP is used to send messages, POP (Post Office Protocol) is a standard for receiving emails. This 
protocol is used by email clients to retrieve messages from the mail server using a connection. One 
drawback of POP is that it does not support offline retrieval of messages. This demerit has now been 
overcome, by the more capable IMAP (Internet Message Access Protocol). This is how one comes to 
know about the offline messages, i.e., messages received when the receiver is not signed in.
By the early 1990s, free and user-friendly email service providers had taken the industry by storm. Players 
like ‘yahoo’ and ‘hotmail’ were competing for the market share. It was this decade that saw the .com 
boom, to the extent that almost everyone wanted an email account. Today, there are more than 600 
million email users across the globe, with newer players like Google (Gmail) and Rediff entering.
 There’s so much more about the origin and history of email, but these were the most important landmark 
events. Looking at its current usage, we can only add that instant messaging via email is here to stay!
Features of Email
 – Electronic : It is an electronic mode of message transmission as it is sent using HTML (Hyper Text 
Markup Language)
 – The computer code used to create web pages.
 – Cost-Effective : It is one of the cost-effective modes of fast communication. Today with the 
advent of smartphones, communicating through emails has become even more cost-effective.
 – Packages : Packages like ‘Messenger’ and ‘Outlook’ help us compose new mails or forward the 
received ones to one or all of the people whose email addresses are stored in the ‘Address Box’. 
They allow us to change font, sizes and colour of the text; highlight, delete, store or save; align, 
center or justify the text; italicize, bold, underline or even print what we write or receive as email.
 – Interface: An interface between email programme and word processing programme allows us 
to cut, copy and paste material from one place to the other.
 – Attachments : The ‘Attach’ option allows us to share documents, worksheets, presentations, 
pictures and videos along with the mails.
 – Spam : Unsolicited or Junk mails can be filtered by using the ‘spam’ option which forbids 
unwanted mails to enter your inbox. These unwanted mails may be advertisements, job offers, 
competition forms, etc. which one does not want to receive frequently.
 – Signature : We can customize our signature as we want it to appear in the complimentary 
closure of every email. Once you add your signature it automatically appears at the end of 
every mail that you compose. One need not write the name, designation, contact no, etc. 
again and again.
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CSEET Reference Reading Material - I Business Communication
CONCEPT OF E-CORRESPONDENCE
Introduction
Today in 21st century globalized world, the uses and needs for the 24 hours availability system of internet 
have been unprecedented.
Professionals, non-professionals, experts or students, we are all turning increasingly to the internet in our 
daily lives. Whether we want to find educational openings abroad, do banking operations online, find 
research material on any issue, send corporate e-mails, internet is the place where we go most often. 
From the trivial to the highly complex, we look for answers to most of our questions in the vast ocean of 
knowledge called World Wide Web (www).
The World Wide Web is a system of interlinked hypertext documents accessed via the Internet. With a 
web browser, one can view web pages that contain text, images, videos, and other multimedia and 
navigate among them via hyperlinks.
Many people use the terms Internet and World Wide Web interchangeably, but in fact these two terms 
are not synonymous. The Internet and the Web are two separate but related things.
What is Web?
The World Wide Web, or simply Web, is a way of accessing information over the medium of the Internet. 
It is an information-sharing model that is built on top of the Internet. The Web uses the HTTP protocol 
(one of the languages spoken over the Internet) to transmit data. Web services, which use HTTP to allow 
applications to communicate in order to exchange business logic, use the Web to share information. 
The Web also utilizes browsers, such as Google Chrome, Internet Explorer or Firefox to access Web 
documents called Web pages that are linked to one another via hyperlinks. Web documents also 
contain graphics, sounds, text and video.
The Web is just one of the ways through which information can be disseminated over the Internet. The 
Internet, not the Web, is also used for e-mail. So the Web is just part of the Internet, albeit a large part, 
but the two terms are not synonymous and should not be confused.
What is Browser?
A Web browser is software application that enables you to find, retrieve, and display information 
available on the World Wide Web (WWW). Browser also allows you to traverse information resources on 
the WWW. The information on the Web is organized and formatted using tags of a Markup language 
called Hypertext Markup Language or HTML. A web browser converts the HTML tags and their content 
into a formatted display of information. Thus, a web browser allows you to see the rich web contents 
from a website. Some of the popular web browsers are - Google Chrome, Internet Explorer, Mozilla 
Firefox, Safari and Opera.
A brief description about some of these interactions/buttons is as follows:
 • Back/Forward Buttons : Back button can be used by you for going back to the previously visited 
web page whereas the Forward button is used to visit the nextpage (if you are not on the most 
recent page visited by you, this may happen when you have pressed the back button at least 
once).
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 • Tab : It allows you to view multiple web pages in the same browser without opening a new 
browser session.
 • Address bar : Also known as URL Bar is a place where you can type the web page address 
that you want to retrieve from the web address. It also displays the address of the web page 
currently being visited by you.
 • Recent History : This shows the links to the web pages previously visited by you.
 • Refresh : This is also called as reload button. It reloads the current web page.
 • Stop : It cancels loading of the current web page. This button is used when the page is in the 
loading state.
 • Home : This button will bring you back to the home page of your website. Home page is the first 
page of any website.
 • Search : Search box allows any term to be searched by the search engine from the web. It can 
also be used for searching of contents from the website visiting.
What is Internet?
The Internet is the network of networks and is used for many applications. Internet allows you to share 
resources and applications with ease. The Internet can carry any digital signals such as text, graphics, 
sound, video and animation. Today, Internet has thousands of networks and millions of users, using 
many services. The Internet is a massive network of networks - a networking infrastructure. It connects 
millions of computers together globally forming a network in which any computer can communicate 
with any other computer as long as they are both connected to the Internet. Information that travels 
over the Internet does so via a variety of languages known as protocols. The Internet uses TCP/IP as its 
basic protocol on which many more application level protocols have been developed.
The terms Internet and World Wide Web are often used in everyday speech without much distinction. 
The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks. In contrast, the Web is one of the 
services that runs on the Internet. It is a collection of textual documents and other resources, linked by 
hyperlinks and URLs, transmitted by web browsers and web servers. In short, the Web can be thought of 
as an application “running” on the Internet.
Viewing a web page on the World Wide Web normally begins either by typing the URL of the page into 
a web browser or by following a hyperlink to that page or resource. The web browser then initiates a 
series of communication messages, behind the scenes, in order to fetch and display it.
“The letters written by one party to another, and the answers thereto, make what is called the 
correspondence of the parties. Such correspondence if done through electronic signals via internet is 
called E-correspondence.”
What is E-Correspondence?
E-Correspondence is commonly known as ‘email-correspondence’ or ‘electronic correspondence’. 
It is an electronic method of providing you with important information on your email address. You 
must supply a valid email address in order to receive information via email. For example: johndoe@
company.com.
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Concept of Email
“Electronic mail” or “e-mail” as it is commonly called is the process of sending or receiving a computer 
file or message by computer modem over telephone wires to a pre-selected “mail box” or “address” on 
another computer. E-mail can also be sent automatically to a large number of electronic addresses via 
mailing lists (through ‘mail-merge’ option). E-mail messages can range from the simplest correspondence 
to business presentations, engineering blueprints, book chapters, or detailed contracts. Graphics, files of 
artwork or photography can be transmitted via this technology as well, though text messages comprise 
the vast majority of e-mail transmissions.
Today, e-mail stands as a central component of business communication, both within business 
enterprises and between business enterprises, because of the many advantages it offers over regular 
mail in terms of efficiency, speed, and 24-hour availability. These characteristics have made electronic 
mail a truly ubiquitous presence across the globe. Indeed, in terms of sheer volume, more than 536 
billion pieces of e-mail were delivered in the United States in 1999, according to the eMarketer Internet 
research firm. Moreover, the eMarketer estimates that in 2000 the number of active e-mail users in 
America reached 111 million.
Since e-mail has emerged as such an important method of business communication in recent years, it 
is important for small business owners to know how to use this technology effectively. Towards that end, 
consultants generally recommend that small business owners and entrepreneurs should select and 
shape such e-mail packages that emphasize convenience and ease of use.
Electronic mail, known commonly by its abbreviation ‘email’, is probably the most used medium of 
communication today. 50 years ago, had someone said that it would be possible to instantly deliver 
documents to a recipient sitting halfway across the globe, he would have been a laughing stock. But, 
email came, saw and conquered the World Wide Web. Today, with email, there’s so much more than 
just written text communication. Ability of the email to securely forward multimedia, photos, software, 
etc. has made it very popular. It’s rightly said that ‘necessity is the mother of all inventions’, and we 
humans have always found a way whenever the need arose. The history of email communication is 
very interesting and intriguing.
History of Email
In 1965, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) was the first to demonstrate the use of the first 
email system known as MAILBOX.
The history of email addresses can also be attributed to Tomlinson. He chose the ‘@’ symbol to provide 
an addressing standard in the form of “user@host”, which is in use till date. This is why Tomlinson is called 
the ‘father of email’ and is credited with its invention.
By 1974, email in its improved form was being used by the US military. By 1975, efforts to organize the 
email bore fruit. A general operating area, known as email account, was created for users who wanted 
to avail the email service. Access controlling was done by giving the user a secret password, which only 
he/she would know. Separate folders were created depending on the purpose. Inbox for incoming 
messages and outbox for outgoing messages.
The year 1976 was a watershed year in the history of email marketing. Email service was being offered 
in commercial packages and per-minute charges were applicable to those using these services. This 
led to the requirement for offline reading, which meant that users could then download their emails on 
to their personal computers, and read them leisurely without using and paying for the airtime. This led 
to the development of applications, which were similar to what Microsoft Outlook does today.
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Requirement for protocols was felt almost immediately, and in 1972 file transfer protocol (FTP) was put in 
use to send email messages. The main drawback here was that FTP created a separate mail for every 
recipient and then dispatched it, which resulted in the loss of precious memory space. This prompted 
the creation of the more efficient SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) in the early 1980s, which became 
a standard protocol to be used in sending email messages. But the initial versions of SMTP failed to 
control the cases of forgery and proved to be a naive protocol in the verification of the authenticity of 
a user. Email viruses, worms and spammers began exploiting these loopholes in SMTP, and even though 
many new and improved versions have been released, this problem continues to be addressed till 
date.
If SMTP is used to send messages, POP (Post Office Protocol) is a standard for receiving emails. This 
protocol is used by email clients to retrieve messages from the mail server using a connection. One 
drawback of POP is that it does not support offline retrieval of messages. This demerit has now been 
overcome, by the more capable IMAP (Internet Message Access Protocol). This is how one comes to 
know about the offline messages, i.e., messages received when the receiver is not signed in.
By the early 1990s, free and user-friendly email service providers had taken the industry by storm. Players 
like ‘yahoo’ and ‘hotmail’ were competing for the market share. It was this decade that saw the .com 
boom, to the extent that almost everyone wanted an email account. Today, there are more than 600 
million email users across the globe, with newer players like Google (Gmail) and Rediff entering.
 There’s so much more about the origin and history of email, but these were the most important landmark 
events. Looking at its current usage, we can only add that instant messaging via email is here to stay!
Features of Email
 – Electronic : It is an electronic mode of message transmission as it is sent using HTML (Hyper Text 
Markup Language)
 – The computer code used to create web pages.
 – Cost-Effective : It is one of the cost-effective modes of fast communication. Today with the 
advent of smartphones, communicating through emails has become even more cost-effective.
 – Packages : Packages like ‘Messenger’ and ‘Outlook’ help us compose new mails or forward the 
received ones to one or all of the people whose email addresses are stored in the ‘Address Box’. 
They allow us to change font, sizes and colour of the text; highlight, delete, store or save; align, 
center or justify the text; italicize, bold, underline or even print what we write or receive as email.
 – Interface: An interface between email programme and word processing programme allows us 
to cut, copy and paste material from one place to the other.
 – Attachments : The ‘Attach’ option allows us to share documents, worksheets, presentations, 
pictures and videos along with the mails.
 – Spam : Unsolicited or Junk mails can be filtered by using the ‘spam’ option which forbids 
unwanted mails to enter your inbox. These unwanted mails may be advertisements, job offers, 
competition forms, etc. which one does not want to receive frequently.
 – Signature : We can customize our signature as we want it to appear in the complimentary 
closure of every email. Once you add your signature it automatically appears at the end of 
every mail that you compose. One need not write the name, designation, contact no, etc. 
again and again.
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 – Search : The search option helps us to locate old email communications. This can be achieved 
by typing the sender’s name in the search box and clicking the search button. It will reflect all 
mails containing the name so typed.
 – Cloud Storage : A more recent feature is cloud storage. Data can be stored on cloud. This 
facilitates access and instant updates to multiple users. Google Drive, Dropbox etc. are 
examples of companies offering cloud service solutions to enterprises.
 – Changes at the Workplace : This trend of online work has brought about other changes like 
virtual workplaces, work from home, flexi-time etc.
Features of an Email Account
An email account, in general has the following folders:
Inbox: Inbox is the main folder in your email account. It contains all the e-mails that have arrived in your 
e- mail account. You can click on inbox to see the mails that you have not read (shown in bold) as well 
as the mails that you have already read (in normal font).
Sent Mail : It shows all the e-mails sent by you from your e-mail account.
Drafts : This folder stores those messages that you have created but has not been sent by you so far. 
These messages are saved by you for more work.
Spam : Spam is unsolicited e-mails or junk mail. It is generally e-mail advertising sent to a group of 
people. We can also term spam as unwanted e-mails. Spam mails are also a big cause of computer
  viruses. Spam mails are identified by the mail services and placed in this folder. These spam mails are 
automatically deleted after a few days.
Trash : Any deleted mail is put in the Trash folder. Trash folder allows you to get back an e-mail which 
has already been deleted. But it is important to know that you can get back the mails only within a few 
days from trash after its deletion. After a few days, mails are permanently deleted from the trash folder.
An email account, in general has the following options:
Compose Mail : Composing is addressing, writing, and sending an e-mail message. By clicking on the 
Compose Mail button a window appears where we can write our message in the message box and 
the email addresses of the person we want to send the mail.
Contacts : The Contacts helps you to find email address of a person whom you have saved in your 
Contact list. We can also quickly find email conversations associated with a contact, and store 
additional information about other persons whose email id is stored in our contacts (such as a mailing 
address, title, phone number, etc).
To field - you have to put the address of the receiver. In case you want to send an email to more than 
one receiver then put commas between their email addresses or add cc. or add bcc.
Cc stands for Carbon copy the persons whose address is listed in this field will receive a carbon copy 
of the message and Bcc means blind carbon copy similar to Cc but the only difference is that the 
recipient who had got Bcc is invisible to other recipients.
Subject : The main heading of your mail i.e., it will explain that the mail is regarding which issue. Please 
note that the subject should be descriptive of the mail to help the receiver understand what mail is 
about without having to open the mail.