Chapter 5 of Writing Online provides a brief overview of electronic mail. I suspect that as time goes on, such an overview will be less needed, much the way you do not usually need an overview on how to pick up a phone and dial (how's that for a term that technology has left behind?). However, to support this chapter, the Crosslinks below lead to more extensive smiley and acronym lists, information about email hoaxes and viruses, tips on how to make your email readable across different email platforms, advice on writing email messages, and a collection of some of my own email typos.

• The WWW Acronym and Abbreviation Server lets you type in an acronym to find out its possible meanings. You can also type in a phrase or name to see if it has an acronym associated with it. 
• The Smileys and Acronym Dictionary is not really a dictionary but rather a list, first originated by Lee Levitt, but now maintained and updated by Wellweb.com and that site's visitors. 
• One Look Dictionary is an all-purpose dictionary site that uses a a CGI script to pass your search term onto a number of different online dictionaries. It allows for wild card searching and is a useful source for ferreting out acronyms of all kinds. 
• Internet Acronyms Dictionary is a searchable (and printable) single file of common acronyms used in Usenet, online chats, and email. 
• EFF's Unofficial Smiley Dictionary is one of the best smiley lists on the WWW. 

• CIAC's Internet Hoaxes offers a fairly authoritative list of Internet Hoaxes. CIAC stands for computer incident advisory capability, and is sponsored by the U.S. Dept. of Energy. Next time someone sends you a chain letter saying Bill Gates will give a million dollars to charity if you pass the letter on, email them back with the URL to this page. Then delete the chain letter. 
• VMyths.com is a site dedicated to distinguishing virus myths from virus facts. If you get a virus warning, check here and at CIAC to see if it is a hoax or myth before passing it on. 
• Symantec's Antivirus Research Page offers up-to-date information on actual viruses. If you do any Internet downloading, you should have virus protection software on your computer, and Symantec makes some of the best. 
• McAfee's Virus Library Page offers information on actual viruses. McAfee also sells a very good virus protection software. 

• Help with Internet Email and Mailing Lists is a page maintained by the City of Grande Prairie, Alberta, Canada. Of special interest is the section on HTML formatting in email. The gist of that section: keep your email formatting in ASCII (American standard code for information interchange, i.e., plain text—no bold, underlining, and so on) for lists; only send formatted email to people if you know that their program can handle the formatting you use. 
• Everything Email is a site devoted to email usage and ettiquette. 
• Bob Brand's List of Email Pet Peeves, although this is just one person's list of email annoyances, it is also a list of common annoyances and thus worth keeping in mind.  
• A Beginner's Guide to Effective Email by Kaitlin Duck Sherwood, in addition to being written by a person with a wonderfully poetic name, also offers some of the most rhetorically wise advice about using email. Originally written in 1994, all her advice still holds. This piece is an online classic. 
• Overview: Electronic Mail comes from the Writing Center at Colorado State University and provides a classroom-ready overview of email. 
• Microcontent: How to Write Headlines, Page Titles, and Subject Lines by Jakob Nielsen, whose web site Useit.com offers some of the best information on Internet use and WWW design, gives advice on how to write effective headings and subjects lines. Remember, in email subject lines are key to getting a reader's attention. 
• Standard Permission Request Form from Association of American Publishers provides a useful template for all the details you might need to get copyright permission for a work. They also offer more general guidelines. 
• Copyright Request: Sample Letter is from the Distance Learning Department at Georgia Southern University. At the bottom of the page you'll find a good example of a letter that requests copyright permission. Note how the letter gives dates of use (usually a semester). It's also good to let people know whether the WWW site you're building will be open access or password protected (as some class sites are). 

The following typos occured during my participation on ACW-L, an email list for writing teachers that is no longer in existence. Sad to say, these are rather typical of my email discussion list messages—one draft tidbits usually tossed off in a hurry. For more formal email occasions, I rely on the kindness of copyeditors.

• In Re: In Adam's Fall, we sinn'd all I wrote "So in addition to working on ways to respond, he also teachers writers a series of strategies for directing readers on how they should respond."   
• In Re: English in 50 years I get too garbled for my own good when I close a message with this final thought: "The answers to where we'll be which all have offered, have in them some implicit answers to what folk would like that answer to be."  
• In Re: comptuer skills and student-centered pedagogy I forgot a word, a small two-letter word, when I wrote "The thing is that there will always be some dealing with technology on the first few days because even all students were fluent, each place's configurations differ."  
• In Re: NYTimes on Dist. Ed. I make the classic your/you're and its/it's errors back to back: "I think you're point's well taken: we can't unchoose the car. But there's an awful lot we could have done better in adopting it's use."