Writing produced for e-mail is writing close to the ease of speech. It seems a hybrid . . . what I produce looks like the words for a written text, yet it somehow lacks the commitment of composed text. It has a tentative, experimental quality. It feels liberating. So, a first answer to the question of what the "newbies" will need to understand is that they are going to discover a new kind of conversation, one that opens out to a new kind of relationship. They are not simply going to be developing new penpals.