Email practice: a pretend mailbox to learn on

The parts of email

• An email address is a name, the @ sign, and the name of a mail service, with no spaces. It has to be exact: with one letter off, the message goes to someone else or comes back. Capital letters usually do not matter.
• The @ sign is said “at”. On a U.S. keyboard it is typed by holding Shift and pressing 2. Other keyboards have it in other places.
• The Inbox is where messages that come to you are listed. Sent keeps a copy of what you sent. Trash (some services say “Deleted” or “Bin”) is where a deleted message goes. Many services empty the Trash on their own after a while.
• The subject is a few words that say what the message is about. It is what the other person sees in their list before they open it.
• Reply answers the one who wrote to you. “Reply all”, on real services, answers everyone the message went to, which is not always what is meant. Forward sends a copy of a message to someone new.
• An attached file is a file sent along with a message: a resume, a form, a photo. Many services mark it with a small paper clip. Services set a limit on how large a file can be.
• A job application by email often asks for the resume as an attached file. The file is made first and attached after. Resume builder makes one.
• A file from someone you do not know, or one you were not expecting, is best left unopened.
• A message that asks for a password or a code, that hurries you, or that says you won something you never entered, is a reason to stop. Leave its link alone. The words of a link can say one place and lead to another. Scam check is our page for that.
• “Junk” or “Spam” is a list where many services put messages they judge unwanted. A message you are waiting for sometimes lands there.
• A sent message usually cannot be taken back. That is why the last step before “Send” here is to read it over once.
• On a computer other people use, sign out of your mail before you get up. Closing the tab may not sign you out. Sign-in practice has a lesson on that.
• A real email account is given at no charge by several companies. Making one is making an account, with a password to keep; Sign-in practice has a lesson on that too.

How the lessons work

• The pretend mailbox is the light-colored box. The strip at its top shows the address of the pretend page; the rest is the page. Its address ends in .example, a name set aside for examples, which no real site has.
• The pretend people of each lesson have two of six first names and addresses at mail.example. The four pretend messages are from a library, a job center and a prize team that do not exist, and from the other pretend person. None of it is anyone’s.
• Only the step at hand answers. The step is written above the pretend mailbox. If something else is clicked, or another box is typed in, the page says what it was, and the pretend mailbox stays as it was. Nothing can be broken.
• The box the step asks for has a blue edge, and what to type is written once more right under it. A box is done the moment it holds what the step asks for, and the words of the step change to the next one. Capital letters, extra spaces and a missing period at the end are forgiven; in an address, every letter counts.
• What there is to type is short: an address, a subject of a few words, a message of a line.
• “Send” sends nothing. The pretend message goes to the pretend “Sent” list and nowhere else.
• The files are names in a list. “Attach a file” opens a list of three pretend files, not the files on your device, and the file that comes with a message opens as a few lines of words. Nothing is opened, read or saved on your device.
• Lesson 7 has a message that asks for a password, with a link in it. The lesson is to leave the link alone and delete the message. If the link is clicked, the page says so and nothing follows, as with anything else that is not the step.
• The page waits. There is no countdown, and taking a long time costs nothing. At the end it says how long the lesson took, from the first time the pointer went into the pretend mailbox, and how many times something else was clicked or typed.
• “Start this lesson again” makes other pretend people and other words to type.

Every time the page is built, a program makes 32,000 lessons, half in English and half in Spanish, and walks through their 164,000 steps in a pretend mailbox of its own, written apart from this page’s: that the thing each step asks for is on the screen when it is asked for, that using it changes something, that the step is said in full, and that nothing but the step’s own thing answers.

What this page does not do

• It is not a real mailbox. No message is sent or received, no account is made anywhere, and the pretend mailbox is gone when the lesson ends.
• It does not look like every mail service. Real ones differ: the buttons are in other places, and many show a small picture in place of a word, such as a bent arrow for Reply, a bin for Delete and a paper clip for Attach.
• It does not teach making a real email account, “Reply all”, “Cc” and “Bcc”, the Junk list, searching old mail, folders and labels, an address book, a mail program on a phone, or saving a file that came with a message. Files practice is our page for files and folders.
• It does not teach how to tell a scam from a real message beyond the lines above. Scam check is our page for that.
• It is not practice for the hand: Mouse and trackpad practice and Typing practice are.
• It does not keep your times or which lessons you have done, gives no certificate and makes no promise about how fast anyone will learn.
• It can be worked by keyboard (Tab, Enter and the space bar), but it has not been tried with a screen reader, a switch or an eye tracker.