These very detailed instructions are to help beginners, especially students, sign up on the stutt-x mailing list. It isn't difficult, but if you have not done it before, it can be daunting. Those of you who already know something of what you are doing on the Net, please have patience while we guide the new people through some very basic basics. If you want to sign up on stut-hlp or on stutt-l, please go to those links. The instructions are very similar, but the addresses and some details are different.

If you are not familiar with how your account's email system works, get help from the computer services department at your school or from your service manager's help line first before you do anything else. You can be pretty sure that all email systems will allow you to place a "to" line and a "from" line and a message body, but if it isn't obvious which goes where, it's best to get help right away.

1. Open your email account. If you are an advanced user with a signature block, turn it off. If you don't know if you have a signature block, you probably don't, so don't worry about it.

2. In the "to" line, type:

Note that the recipient, "listserv", does not have an "e" at the end. This is because the list handling program is a robot named "listserv" without the "e". Looks silly, but it works. (My paternal grandmother, who was a prickly sort, was a "Thorn without an "e", thank you", before she got married. She was afterwards, too, for that matter.)

3. Most mail handling programs will put your return address in the "from" line for you. You should not need to write in your email account - but some older programs require that. If the "from" line appears automatically, go on to the next step. If it did not, you will need to write your email address in the "from" line.

4. You may ignore the subject line if you want unless you are using an AOL account in which case you must put something, it doesn't matter what, there in order to proceed. However, even if you don't have to use a subject line, those can help you keep track of which messages have cleared and which haven't, so it's a good idea to use one. To eliminate confusion, do not write anything that resembles "Subscribe stutt-x" in that line. Use something informative like the number of the class that reading the list is homework in: "stutt-x for speech path 504".

5. Cursor down to the body of the message and write:

without quotation marks or any other funny stuff. "Firstname Lastname" stands for your own name, of course. The program expects a first name, a space, and a last name. It will reject your request if it doesn't get two entries. You can use your initials if you want, the computer doesn't really much care how long or short your names are, just as long as you have two of them. So a couple alternative forms would be:

6. You will receive a confirmation notice after a few minutes, asking you to answer simply "ok". Do that. Reply to the address that sent you the confirmation notice, erase any message (and turn off your signature block if you have one) and type in the letters ok in small type.

7. A few minutes after that, you will recieve a message that is about as interesting as the instructions for filling out an income tax return. Read it, and then save it. This contains the instructions for unsubscribing later on. It will keep you from looking like a perfect fool at the end of the semester when you go to sign off and can't remember how you got on in the first place. Print it out and put it where you can find it, or save it on a disk.

8. If you would rather get a "digest" which means that you get all the day's messages bunched together in one great big email once a day, send another message to the listserv robot (remember the address? It's listserv@asu.edu). The procedure is exactly like the subscription message, except that in the body you write:

The robot will send you back a message which tells what options your subscription includes. It should say "digest" among them. It's a good idea to keep that, in case something goes wrong with your subscription, but it isn't necessary. It is kind of technical, and kind of interesting, but unless you want to learn more about how email works, you probably don't need to understand it fully.

9. If you are a student, read these instructions, and then find someone else to work with. You should both help each other sign on, because you will probably learn more from helping someone else than you would just doing it yourself. Besides, it's more fun. When you're done, go out for a pizza.

See you on the list!

(If your browser is configured right and connected to an email account, you can also subscribe by connecting to this link which will automatically put in the correct address for you, ignoring the subject line, and then typing the subscribe message as described above. JK)

added January 17, 1998