Notes on Word Processors and Attachments: A word processor attachment is an attachment to e-mail. If this does not make sense, just look carefully at the e-mail program that you are using. My program, Outlook Express, has a menu bar at the top of the message window. One of the menu selections is "Add Attachments" (usually, this is accompanied by an image of a paperclip). By clicking on the "Add Attachment," your program will prompt you to select a document that you want to "attach" to the e-mail. Attachments can be anything that you want to send to somebody--a picture, a word processing document (electronic typewriter document such as Microsoft Word, WordPerfect, Microsoft Works, or any number of programs which allow you to electronically type a letter and print it out), a spreadsheet document, etc.

Once you have selected the document that you want to attach to an e-mail, you hit the "send" button and your e-mail plus the "attached" document is sent on its merry way.

Notes on why I prefer data sent as an "attachment" (see above) in word processor format attachments rather than data sent as a part of the e-mail message:

From a message I recently sent to a person asking about my request for attachments:

It's fairly straightforward: the e-mail that you just sent to me is automatically formatted by your e-mail program. The program formats the text in a way that makes it easy to view but places "breaks" at the end of each text line. These "breaks" are actually paragraph breaks (that is, the electronic equivalent to pressing the "return" or "enter" key on your keyboard at the end of a paragraph in a word processing document). To make this understandable, have you ever copied an e-mail message and placed it in a word processing document (Microsoft Word, Microsoft Works, etc.) and discovered that it contains unwanted paragraph breaks at the end of some lines of text? That's what I'm talking about. E-mail programs will create a "break" at the end of a specified number of characters (letters or spaces), usually 72. Another way of understanding this is visual: have you ever read an e-mail document that looks something like this:

> > AFTER A FEW OF THE USUAL SUNDAY EVENING HYMNS, THE CHURCH'S
> > PASTOR SLOWLY STOOD UP, WALKED OVER TO THE PULPIT AND, BEFORE HE BEGAN
> >HIS
> >SERMON FOR THE EVENING, BRIEFLY INTRODUCED A GUEST MINISTER WHO WAS IN
>THE
> >SERVICE.

Notice that there are ">" marks at the beginning of each sentence and the sentence itself breaks in unusual places? This what I'm talking about concerning e-mail formatting

The problem with e-mail formatting for folks like me who want to copy material and place it on a web site is that we have to remove all of the unwanted marks and "breaks," which, I can tell you, can be a major pain-in-the-neck.

It is for this reason that I suggest that folks send word processor documents (like the one's mentioned above. These documents are formatted to provide clear, clean paragraph's, as well as special features such as footnotes, etc. By sending the document as an attachment to the e-mail, I can then spend very little time fiddling with the document.