Email

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.
When a "robot" on Wikipedia makes changes to image files, the uploader receives an email about the changes made.

Email (short for electronic mail; alternatively spelled e-mail) is a method of transmitting and receiving messages using electronic devices. It was conceived in the late–20th century as the digital version of, or counterpart to, mail (hence 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.

Email operates across computer networks, primarily the Internet, and also local area networks. Today's email systems are based on a store-and-forward model. Email 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 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 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.[1]

  1. ^ Cite error: The named reference first was invoked but never defined (see the help page).