E-mail and Behavioral Changes

1Electronic Mail

1.1. Electronic mail, what is it exactly?

If e-mail is a well-established communication tool and seemingly wellknown, its official definition is not necessary. According to the General Commission of Terminology and Neology¹ and the list of terms relating to electronic mail in the official journal of 2 December 1997 [LEF 97], e-mail, a term in the field of telecommunications and IT, is a “service enabling the user typing, delayed consultation and transmission of electronic documents or messages on computers connected to the network.”

According to this commission, the term is synonymous with electronic messaging, where, strictly speaking, the message takes the name of electronic mail that is “document received, consulted or transmitted by means of electronic mail.” Since 1997, the official journal indicates that “the electronic message can include a text, or a series of sounds or images.”

These two definitions were to be modified by the General Commission of Terminology and Neology in 2003, and published in the official journal of 20 June 2003 [JOU 03]. The current definitions since then are as follows:

• – E-mail: a computerised document that a user receives, sends, or consults at a later stage via a network.
• – Electronic messaging: The service enabling users to receive, send, or consult e-mails at a later stage.

We can see that these new definitions use the term e-mail as the first designation, the term electronic mail being considered as a synonym. In addition ...