Electronic mail and Snail mail

Electronic mail, commonly known as e-mail had significantly took over the usage of snail mail (mailing service by post). Postal services take up to a week or three days depending on how much you are willing to spend. In oppose to that, e-mail is free and your receiver gets the message on the spot. All you need is a computer or a cellular with e-mail capabilities to retrieve the message.

This low costs and immediacy method is made possible by e-mail service provider, such as Yahoo mail, Gmail and Hotmail (Indexoftheweb.com). All you need to do is to register with either one of them and choose your desired name from your e-mail address

The best part about the e-mail is the storage system. You are able to store old messages for later references and Gmail offers 2 GB that is more than enough for an average user. Besides, there are features that allow you to monitor your contact list, whether they are online or offline (Mills 2006).

Apart from that, you can also embed moving emoticons on your e-mail to express a certain emotion or to create a mood (Halliday & Hasan 1985).

But then again, e-mail is subjected to spam. All a person needs to do is to create an email and start spamming whoever he wants to due to the easy accessibility and free registration.

Source: http://www.matrixmarking.com

The evolution of e-mail originated from snail mail, which is similar to (Schirato & Yell 1996, p. 109). E-mail’s domination doesn’t really affect postal services; there are parcels and items that are needed to be sent manually.

Reference List:

Halliday, MAK & Hasan, R 1985, Language, context and text: aspects of language in a social semiotic perspective, Deakin University Press, Victoria.

Index of the top Free Email Providers on the web, viewed 13 November 2008, <http://www.indexoftheweb.com/Free/Free_Email.htm>.

Mills, E 2006, 'Google merges Gmail with chat', CNET News.com, viewed 13 November 2008, <http://www.news.com/Google-merges-Gmail-with-chat/2100-1032_3-6035898.html>

Schirato, T & Yell, S 1996, Communication and cultural literacy: an introduction, Allen & Unwin, NSW, pp. 90-117.