Prepare to Read - Timberview Middle School

Prepare to Read
from E-Mail from Bill Gates
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"E-Mail from Bill Gates,"
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Connecting to the Literature
• background
This excerpt from "E-Mail from Bill Gates" tells of one writer's unexpected e-mail correspondence. Do you use e-mail? Think about the forms
of communication you use, and whether or not a famous person would be
likely to respond in any of those forms.
• graphic organizers
Background
• literary elements
While preparing an article on Bill Gates, John Seabrook sent an e-mail
to the famous computer whiz. To Seabrook's surprise, Gates responded, and
the interview was conducted almost entirely through e-mail.
• reading strategies
52
♦ Coming of Age
Literary Analysis
Magazine Article
A magazine article is a short nonfiction text written in prose. It may
present or explore ideas, insights, explanations, or facts.
John Seabrook's magazine article explains a technical subject of current interest. It also gives insight into one of the key figures involved in
the tonic_ As you read. notice how Seabrook alternates explanations and
insights. Use the following focus questions to guide your reading:
1. What information and insights does this article give about Bill Gates?
2. What was the author's purpose for writing this article?
Connecting Literary Elements
A magazine article is a form of journalism—the gathering, writing, and
editing of current information to be presented in the media. Media include:
• magazines and newspapers
• radio and television
• Web sites and other internet resources
Media text is quickly outdated. When gathering information from
media sources, check the date and consider whether it is recent.
Reading Strategy
Example
Using Context Clues
composition book standards
like "It may have come to
your attention."
Use context clues—the words in the surrounding text—to make an
informed guess about the meaning of unfamiliar words and terms.
At the moment, the best way to communicate with another person on the information highway is to exchange electronic mail:
to write a message on a computer and send it through the telephone
lines into someone else's computer.
Here, the context (in italics) gives a definition of "electronic mail." As
you read, look for the types of context clues shown on the chart. Record
unfamiliar words and technical terms on a similar chart.
Vocabulary Development
interaction (in' tar ak" shen) n. actions etiquette (et' i kit) n. rules for
behavior (p. 56)
that affect each other (p. 55)
misinterpret (mis' in ter - prit) v. to
spontaneously (span to na as le)
adv. naturally, without planning
understand or explain incorrectly
(p. 55)
(p. 56)
met)
adj.
private
or
intimate (in' to
personal (p. 56)
Comparison
there was a pause after each
response to think; it was like
football players huddling up
after each play.
Contrast
I give out my home phone
number to almost no one but
my e-mail address is known
very broadly.
Restatement
How about immortality—
being remembered for a
thousand years after you're
dead ...
from E-Mail from Bill Gates ♦ 53
from
E — MAIL FROM
BILL GATES
John Seabrook
A
t the moment, the best way to communicate with another
person on the information highways is to exchange electronic mail:
to write a message on a computer and send it through the telephone lines into someone else's computer. In the future, people
will send each other sound and pictures as well as text, and do it
in real time, 2 and improved technology will make it possible to
have rich, human electronic exchanges, but at present E-mail is
the closest thing we have to that. Even now, E-mail allows you to
meet and communicate with people in a way that would be impossible on the phone, through the regular mail, or face to face, as I
discovered while I was working on this story. Sitting at my computer
one day, I realized that I could try to communicate with Bill Gates,
the chairman and co-founder of the software giant Microsoft, on the
information highway. At least, I could send E-mail to his electronic
address, which is widely available, not tell anyone at Microsoft I was
doing it, and see what happened. I wrote:
Dear Bill,
I am the guy who is writing the article about you for The
New Yorker. It occurs to me that we ought to be able to do
some of the work through e-mail. Which raises this fascinating question—What kind of understanding of another person
can e-mail give you? .. .
You could begin by telling me what you think is unique
about e-mail as a form of communication.
John
I hit "return," and the computer said, "mail sent." I walked out
to the kitchen to get a drink of water and played with the cat for
a while, then came back and sat at my computer. Thinking that
I was probably wasting money, I nevertheless logged on again and
entered my password. "You have mail," the computer said.
I typed "get mail," and the computer got the following:
1. information highway network of computers and file servers that allows for the
rapid exchange of electronic information.
2. in real time in actual time (with little delay between the moment of sending and
the moment of receiving the sound, picture, and text).
54
•
Coming
of Age
Reading Strategy
Using Context Clues
What clues could help
someone unfamiliar with
computers figure out the
meaning of "logged on"?
From: Bill Gates <[email protected] >
Ok, let me know if you get this email.
A Critical Viewing
What does the picture
suggest about
communication and
technology? [Interpret]
According to my computer, eighteen minutes had passed
between the time I E-mailed Bill and he E-mailed me back. His
message said:
E-mail is a unique communication vehicle for a lot of reasons.
However email is not a substitute for direct interaction. . . .
There are people who I have corresponded with on email for
months before actually meeting them—people at work and
otherwise. If someone isn't saying something of interest its
easier to not respond to their mail than it is not to answer the
phone. In fact I give out my home phone number to almost no
one but my email address is known very broadly. I am the
only person who reads my email so no one has to worry about
embarrassing themselves or going around people when they
send a message. Our email is completely secure. . . .
Email helps out with other types of communication. It
allows you to exchange a lot of information in advance of a
meeting and make the meeting far far more valuable. . . .
Email is not a good way to get mad at someone since you
can't interact. You can send friendly messages very easily
since those are harder to misinterpret.
interaction
(in' tar al( shen )
n. actions that affect
each other
misinterpret
(mis' in tut" prit) v. to
understand or explain
incorrectly
4Reading Check
We began to E-mail each other three or four times a week. I would
have a question about something and say to myself, "I'm going to
What happened after the
author e-mailed Bill Gates?
from E-Mail from Bill Gates ♦ 55
E-mail Bill about that," and I'd write him a message and get a oneor two-page message back within twenty-four hours, sometimes much
sooner. At the begirming of our electronic relationship, I would wake
up in the middle of the night and lie in bed wondering if I had E-mail
from Bill. Generally, he seemed to write messages at night, sleep
(maybe), then send them the next morning. We were intimate in a
curious way, in the sense of being wired into each other's minds, but
our contact was elaborately stylized, like ballroom dancing.
In some ways, my E-mail relationship with Bill was like an ongoing, monthlong conversation, except that there was a pause after
each response to think; it was like football players huddling up after
each play. There was no beginning or end to Gates' messages—no
time wasted on stuff like "Dear" and "Yours"—and I quickly corrected
this etiquette breach in my own messages. Nor were there any fifthgrade-composition-book standards like "It may have come to your
attention that" and "Looking forward to hearing from you." Social
niceties are not what Bill Gates is about. Good spelling is not what
Bill Gates is about, either. He never signed his messages to me, but
sometimes he put an "&" at the end, which, I learned, means "Write
back" in E-mail language. After a while, he stopped putting the "&,"
but I wrote back anyway. He never addressed me by name. Instead of
a letterhead, there was this:
intimate (in' to mat) adj.
private or personal
etiquette (et i kit) n. rules
for behavior
Reading Strategy
Using Context Clues
What context clues help
Sender: [email protected]
Received: from netmail.microsoft.com by dub-img2.compuserve.com (5.67/5.930129sam) id AA03768;
Wed, 6 Oct 93 14:00:51-0400
Received: by netmail.microsoft.com (5.65/25—eef)
id AA27745; Fri, 8 Oct 93 10:56:01-0700
Message-Id:
<[email protected] >
X-Msmail-Message-Id: 15305A55
X-Msmail-Conversation-Id: 15305A55
From: Bill Gates <[email protected] >
To: [email protected]
I sometimes felt that this correspondence was a game I was playing with Gates through the computer, or maybe a game I was playing against a computer. What is the right move? What question will
get me past the dragon and into the wizard's star chamber, where
the rich information is stored? I had no idea where Gates was when
he wrote to me, except that once he told me he was on a "think
week" at his family's summer place on Hood Canal. I could not tell
whether he was impatient or bored with my questions and was
merely answering them because it served his interest. Because we
couldn't talk at the same time, there was little chance for the conversation to move spontaneously. On the other hand, his answers
meant more, in a certain way, being written, than answers I would
have received on the phone. I worried that he might think I was
56 ♦ Coming of Age
you guess the meaning of
the term letterhead?
spontaneously
(span to ne as le ) adv.
naturally, without
planning
being "random" (a big putdown at Microsoft) because I jumped from
topic to topic. I sometimes wondered if I was actually communicating
with Bill Gates. How hard would it be for an assistant to write these
messages? Or for an intelligent agent to do it?
I wrote a message titled "What motivates you?":
You love to compete, right? Is that where your energy comes
from—love of the game? I wonder how it feels to win on your
level. How much do you fear losing? How about immortality—
being remembered for a thousand years after you're dead—does
that excite you? How strong is your desire to improve people's
lives (by providing them with better tools for thinking and communicating)? Some driven people are trying to heal a wound or to
recover a loss. Is that the case with you?
Gates wrote back:
Its easy to understand why I think I have the best job around
because of day to day enjoyment rather than some grand long
term deep psychological explanation. It's a lot of fun to work with
very smart people in a competitive environment. . . . We get to
hire the best people coming out of school and give them challenging jobs. We get to try and figure out how to sell software in every
part of the world. Sometimes our ideas work very well and sometimes they work very poorly. As long as we stay in the feedback
loop and keep trying it's a lot of fun.
It is pretty cool that the products we work on empower individuals and make their jobs more interesting. It helps a lot in
inventing new software ideas that I will be one of the users of the
software so I can model what's important. . . .
Just thinking of things as winning is a terrible approach.
Success comes from focusing in on what you really like and are
good at—not challenging every random thing. My original vision
of a personal computer on every desk and every home will take
more than 15 years to achieve so there will have been more than
30 years since I first got excited about that goal. My work is not
like sports where you actually win a game and its over after a
short period of time.
Besides a lot of luck, a high energy level and perhaps some IQ
I think having an ability to deal with things at a very detailed
level and a very broad level and synthesize 3 between them is
probably the thing that helps me the most. This allows someone
to take deep technical understanding and figure out a business
strategy that fits together with it.
It's ridiculous to consider how things will be remembered after
you are dead. The pioneers of personal computers including
Jobs, Kapor, Lampson, Roberts, Kaye, 4 are all great people but
Reading Strategy
Using Context Clues
What words restate the
meaning of immortality?
AteadiaggChatk
Why does Bill Gates
think he has "the best
job around"?
3. synthesize to form by bringing together separate parts.
4. Jobs, ... Kaye important developers of the computer and software industries.
from E-Mail from Bill Gates ♦ 57
I don't think any of us will merit an entry in a history book.
I don't remember being wounded or losing something big
so I don't think that is driving me. I have wonderful parents
and great siblings. I live in the same neighborhood I grew up
in (although I will be moving across the lake when my new
house is done). I can't remember any major disappointments.
I did figure out at one point that if I pursued pure mathematics it would be hard to make a major contribution and
there were a few girls who turned me down when I asked
them out.
At the end of one message, I wrote:
This reporting via e-mail is really fascinating and I think you
are going to come across in an attractive way, in case
you weren't sure of that.
John Seabrook
(b. 1959)
Gates wrote:
I comb my hair everytime before I send email hoping to
appear attractive. I try and use punctuation in a friendly
way also. I send :) and never :(.
John Seabrook
grew up in a tomato-farming community in New Jersey.
Years later, when
4
writing about
biotechnology and
a new kind of tomato, he
mentioned this boyhood
experience. Readers' reactions made him realize that
science writers need to add
a personal touch.
ip
AV
4..
Review and Assess
Think about the Selection
1. Respond: Would you like to meet Bill Gates? Why or why not?
2. (a) Recall: Why does Seabrook first send e-mail to Bill Gates?
(b) Analyze: What does Seabrook accomplish by letting
Gates speak for himself?
3. (a) Recall: What does Seabrook learn about the etiquette
of sending and receiving e-mail? (b) Compare and
Contrast: How is Seabrook's first e-mail to Gates similar
to and different from later e-mails? (c) Infer: What does
Gates's e-mail style reveal about him?
4. (a) Speculate: Do you think Seabrook would use this
method of communication to conduct other interviews?
(b) Support: Why or why not?
5. (a) Apply: Why is Bill Gates of current interest? (b) Evaluate:
Based on the topic of the article, how important is the date of
the article? Explain. (c) Extend: What media sources could
you use to find information about Bill Gates's most recent
activities and accomplishments?
6. Take a Stand: Do you think that "basic computer skills"
should be a required class? Why or why not?
58
♦ Coming of Age
4k
Bill Gates
(b. 1955)
As co-founder
of Microsoft,
Bill Gates
helped launch
the computer
revolution. His
phenomenal
success and
astounding wealth have
made him a legend in the
business world. In 2000
Gates stepped down as chief
executive officer of
Microsoft to become chairman and chief software
architect of the company.
Review and Assess
Literary Analysis
Quick Review
Magazine Article
1. List facts about e-mail and details about Bill Gates that you learned
A magazine article is a
short, informational work
of nonfiction published in
from this magazine article. Record them on a chart like this.
Facts About E-Mail
Details About Bill Gates
a periodical. To review a
magazine article, see
page 53.
2. What do you think was Seabrook's purpose for writing this article?
Connecting Literary Elements
Journalism is informational
3. Identify two topics related to this article that a journalist might
investigate.
4. Complete a chart like the one below to compare the strengths and
weaknesses of different media.
writing about real people,
places, events, and ideas
of current interest.
Media forms include
Television
Newspaper
Internet
magazines, newspapers,
television, radio, and the
Speed
Internet.
Problems
To review journalism and
Use of visuals
media, see page 53.
How easy to deliver to
many people at once
Reading Strategy
Context clues are words
Using Context Clues
and phrases from the
surrounding text that help
For each of the following sentences, give the meaning of the italicized
words. Explain the context clues that help you determine the meaning.
you figure out the meaning
of unfamiliar words and
phrases. To review context
5. "Our contact was elaborately stylized, like ballroom dancing."
6. "I have wonderful parents and great siblings."
clues, see page 53.
Net
Extend Understanding
7.
What personal qualities do you think are
useful for people who work in the computer field? (b) What academic
subjects should a person study to prepare for a career in computers?
Career Connection: (a)
www.phschool.com
Take the interactive
self-test online to check
your understanding of
the selection.
from E-Mail from Bill Gates ♦ 59
Integrate Language Skills
Vocabulary Development Lesson
Word Analysis: Latin Prefix inter-
Concept Development: Antonyms
The Latin prefix inter- in interaction means
"between" or "among." On your paper, write the
correct word in each blank by adding inter- to
one of these words:
Antonyms are words with opposite meanings,
such as happy and sad or light and dark. Copy each
sentence. Underline the antonym of the italicized
word.
national
state
active
1. An
highway system runs from
California to Maine.
2. Many people play
video games.
communications.
3. E-mail speeds up
?
?
?
Spelling Strategy
Before adding the suffix -tion, you will probably have to drop the final letter or letters of the
base word:
1. Use symbols and words that are easy to
understand so that the receiver does not
misinterpret your message.
2. It is strange to have such intimate correspondence with such a public figure.
3. I had hoped we could communicate spontaneously, but I had to settle for planned
exchanges.
4. His messages followed e-mail etiquette, but
mine contained examples of bad form.
interact + -tion = interaction.
On your paper, add -don to the following verbs.
3. reflect
1. connect
2. relate
Grammar Lesson
Pronouns and Antecedents
Pronouns are words that take the place of a
noun or nouns. Some common pronouns include
we, he, they, I, each other, it, and us.
The noun to which a pronoun refers is the
pronoun's antecedent. Many pronouns must have
an antecedent in order for their meaning to be
clear. In the following example, the pronoun
those refers to the antecedent messages.
Example: You can send friendly messages easily
since those are harder to misinterpret.
For more practice, see page R28, Exercise B.
Practice Copy each of the following sentences.
Circle the pronoun. Underline the antecedent.
1. Seabrook e-mailed Gates to ask him questions.
2. Seabrook and Gates corresponded because
they were working on an interview.
3. The ability to recognize problems and find
solutions for them is important.
Writing Application Revise the following passage so that it is clear to which noun he refers.
Replace some uses of he with a name.
Seabrook wrote to Gates and he wrote back to
him. He told him that he was writing his article
about him. He wrote back to him.
1/16 Prentice Hall Writing and Grammar Connection: Chapter 14, Section 2
r
60 ♦ Coming of Age
Writing Lesson
Comparison of Forms of Communication
Choose two forms of communication, such as e-mail and conventional letterwriting, and write a short essay comparing and contrasting them.
.444^g
t,f-Nrnrarc. List
will
111 ,l/11LELA.L..,•
Choose the two
V V frsrty,
forms of
,11 r
co mmunication yyou
vs, vr
ways in which these forms are alike and different.
Drafting Organize your comparison point by point. Describe a feature of
e-mail, then describe the same or related feature of your other form
of communication. When you compare or contrast ideas or
features of equal weight, use parallel structure—similar or repeated
grammatical forms and structures.
Revising Look for passages where the similarities or differences would
be shown more sharply if you used parallel structure. Revise to
produce parallel structure.
Model: Parallel Structure
Not Parallel: E-mail transmits in moments; someone
receiving conventional mail might wait days.
Parallel: E-mail takes moments; conventional mail takes days.
Each part of the revised
sentence has the same
structure. This makes the
difference between the
two types of mail stand
out.
‘146 Prentice Hall Writing and Grammar Connection: Chapter 8, Section 3
Extension Activities
Listening and Speaking Do an oral presentation
on the history of forms of communication, such
as the telephone, facsimile machine, or e-mail.
First, tell about early versions. Then, describe the
development. Conclude by explaining how the
system functions today and what experts predict
for the future. Follow these tips:
1. Use strong action verbs such as transmit,
communicate, and deliver.
2. Use active voice rather than passive voice.
Passive: The file is stored on the drive.
Active: The drive stores the file.
Research and Technology Work with a group to
produce a manual explaining how to use e-mail.
Each group member can research and explain
one function, such as how to develop an e-mail
address book or how to save a message. Organize
the topics of your manual in a logical sequence
and prepare a table of contents.
www.phschool.com
Go online for an additional research activity
using the Internet.
from
E-Mail from Bill Gates ♦ 61
READING INFORMATIONAL MATERIALS
Magazine Articles
About Magazine Articles
Magazines are a form of print media. Although most are published
monthly or weekly, some appear quarterly, or four times a year. Magazines
either appeal to certain special interest groups (such as gardeners, skiers,
or opera lovers), or they offer feature stories on current topics to a general
audience with more detail than newspapers can give. Magazines often
contain opinions as well as facts.
Reading Strategy
Headings
Informational text in magazines, newspapers, and textbooks is often
divided into sections. Headings, or heads, usually stand out from the regular text in one of the following ways:
• color
• boldface
• larger print
• placement on page
Heads organize the material in an easy-to-follow pattern, which helps
readers find information quickly. They also visually break up the type on a
page so that the article is easy to read. Look, for instance, at the heads in
"How to Be Polite Online." The first three paragraphs of the article introduce the article. Then, the first head, "Tone of voice online," tells the
reader what information will be covered in the first section. Use headings
to help you organize notes and summaries as outlined on the chart below.
Section
'
Title
Introductory Text
Tone of Voice Online
Table 1
Table 2
Flame On/Flame Off
Looking Good Online
62
♦ Coming of Age
Summary
HOW to Be Polite Online
from Netiquette VIRGINIA SHEA
The truth is that computer networking is still in its infancy. Probably
nothing illustrates this more clearly
than the "ASCII' jail": 90% of network communications are still limited to plain old ASCII text—that is,
the characters of the alphabet, the
numerals 0 through 9, and the most
basic punctuation marks. It's bad
enough that multimedia communications have not been implemented
in most of cyberspace. 2 Most of the
time you can't even put a word in
bold or italics!
Because people cannot see or
hear you in cyberspace, you need to
pay close attention to the style of
your electronic communications if
you hope to make a good impression
there.The style of electronic cornmunications encompasses everything
Table 1: Emoticons
Smile; laugh; "I'm joking"
Frown; sadness; "Bummer"
:)
Variant of :-) or "Have a
nice day"
Wink; denotes a pun or
sly joke
:-0
Yelling or screaming; or
completely shocked
:-()
Can't (or won't) stop talking
: D
: P
-
Big, delighted grin
-
Sticking out your tongue
:-] or :-)
%-)
%-(
about your correspondence except
its content, from your use of network
conventions like "smileys" and
"sigs" to the number of characters
per line in your email messages.
Style considerations are influenced by several of the rules of
Rule 4,
Netiquette, especially
Respect other people's time, and
Rule 5, Make yourself look good
online. It doesn't matter how brilliant your messages are if they're
formatted in such a way that no one
can read them.
Tone of voice online The fact that most
network interactions are limited to
written words can be the source of
misunderstandings. Fortunately,
clever network users have had
years to deal with this. They've created a shorthand to help communicate the tone that you'd otherwise
get from the other person's voice,
facial expressions, and gestures.
These shorthand expressions are
known as smileys or emoticons.
They're easy to figure out once you
get the hang of it. Just remember
that they're all sideways faces.
See Table 1 for a list of the most
commonly used emoticons. There
are whole books about smileys for
those who are interested, including
the enjoyable Smiley Dictionary by
Seth Godin.
Sarcastic smile
Confused but happy
Confused and unhappy
Can't decide how to feel;
no feelings either way
Kiss
{} or []
Hug
{{{***}}}
Hugs and kisses
1. ASCII acronym for American Standard
Code for Information Interchange, a standard computer code used to assist the
interchange of information among various
types of data-processing equipment.
2. cyberspace popular term for the borderless world of computers and telecommunication on the Internet.
Reading Informational Material: Magazine Articles ♦ 63
Table 2: Abbreviations
BTW
IMHO
IMNSHO
IOW
IRL
ITRW
LOL
OTF
By the way
In my humble opinion
In my not so humble
opinion
In other words
In real life
In the real world
Laughing out loud
On the floor (laughing)
ROTFL
Rolling on the floor
laughing
WRT
YMMV
With regard to
Your mileage may vary
<g> or <G> Grin
<bg>
1 Big grin
People also use abbreviations to
express emotional states or to qualify
what they're saying. See Table 2 for a
list of common abbreviations.
The "FLAME ON/FLAME OFF" notifier
When you really want to run off at the
keyboard—but you want your readers to know that you know that you're
not expressing yourself in your usual
measured, reasoned manner—you
need to let them know that you know
that you're flaming.' So before you
begin your rant, simply enter the
words FLAME ON. Then rant away.
When you're done, write FLAME OFF
and resume normal discourse.
Looking good online One of the neat
things about computers is that they
let us use all kinds of special effects in
our documents that we didn't even
dream of back in the days of typewriters (if you're old enough to remember
those days). But when you're communicating online, in most cases it's back
to the typewriter as far as effects go.
Even if your mail system lets you use
boldface, italics, and tabs, there's no
guarantee that your correspondent's
system will understand them. At
worst, your communication will turn
into unreadable gibberish.
64 ♦ Coming of Age
What to do?
• Forget about boldface, italics,
tabs, and font changes. Never
use any effect you couldn't get
on an old-fashioned typewriter.
In fact, you can't even use all of
those. Underlining won't work,
for example. Nor can you use the
old "required backspace" trick to
put a diacritical mark 4 (a tilde or
an accent mark, for example)
over another character.
• Most systems won't read the
diacritical marks anyway, so just
leave them out. If you feel an
accent mark is absolutely necessary, type an apostrophe after
the letter the accent would have
gone over.
• Use only ASCII characters. This
includes all 26 letters of the
alphabet (upper and lower
case), the numerals 0 through 9,
and most commonly used punctuation marks. For any publishing mavens out there, however,
it excludes em dashes ("—"), en
dashes ("—"), and bullets.
• Limit your line length to 80
characters, or better yet, 60
characters.
Otherwise, your lines may break in
weird places and your readers
will have to wade through notes
that look like this.
Believe me,
it gets annoying after a very short
while.
• NEVER TYPE YOUR NOTES IN
ALL CAPS, LIKETHIS. It's rude—
like shouting constantly. And,
like constant shouting, it makes
people stop listening. All caps
may be used, IN MODERATION,
for emphasis.
• To indicate italics, you may
*surround the material to be
italicized with asterisks.*
3. flaming slang for "ranting."
4. diacritical (di a krit ik al) mark mark
added to a letter or symbol to show its
pronunciation.
Text is organized
into chunks using
bullets and tables.
Check Your Comprehension
1. What elements contribute to the style of electronic communication?
2. What are some possible online substitutes for voice, facial expressions, and gestures?
3. Why is it suggested that you not type in all capitals or write lines
longer than sixty characters?
Applying the Reading Strategy
Headings
4. What are three main ideas identified by the headings in this article?
5. What information do you learn from Table 1?
6. What is the abbreviation for "In other words"? How do you know?
Activity
Use Online Etiquette
Many products now carry e-mail addresses so that customers can give
feedback online. Find the e-mail addresses for two companies that produce
products you use. Send an e-mail to each company, expressing your satisfaction or dissatisfaction with the product. Follow the etiquette outlined in
"How to Be Polite Online." Tell the class when and if you receive a reply.
Comparing Informational Materials
Compare Articles
This article, and the article from "E-Mail from Bill Gates," both discuss
the way people communicate through e-mail. Each writer, however, has a
unique purpose that affects the scope, or range, of ideas that are covered
and the way those ideas are organized. In "E-Mail from Bill Gates," the
author's purpose is to give you a glimpse through e-mail at a famous computer whiz. The author of
E-mail from How to Be
"How to Be Polite Online"
Bill Gates
Polite Online
wants to inform readers
about the do's and don'ts of
Main subject of article
e-mailing. Fill out a chart
like the one shown here to
Three main ideas
find similarities and differences between the two texts.
Types of details included
Reading Informational Material: Magazine Articles ♦ 65