Tanja Mastomaki had no idea a simple e-mail would change her life.

A friend in Honolulu asked if she could dish advice about teaching in Japan with a guy interested in doing the same. She agreed and shot off a quick e-mail about her experience as an English kindergarten teacher in Miyakonojo.

Fredric Villamor quickly responded, and the two started a long-distance friendship — she lived in Canada, he lived in Hawai'i — via e-mail.

Most of their messages revolved around Japan — their one commonality.

But one day he asked, "Is there anything else you want to know about me other than my Japan experiences?"

Mastomaki took that as a cue, sending off fun questions like "What was your favorite toy as a child?"

His responses — especially one about his friend being killed by a shark — sparked a different interest in her.

"I was moved by his ability to share his grief in the loss of his friend," Mastomaki said, who reciprocated with an emotional story about losing her brother to cancer. "From that point on, we were both interested in getting to know as much about each other as we could."

After a month of e-mailing, they agreed to talk on the phone. A few months later, he got on a plane to met her in Ontario.

Then five months later, they were married. She moved to Hawai'i two weeks after the wedding.

"We've been happily married ever since," she wrote in an e-mail. "Grin."

These days, e-mail is an essential flirtation tool for a whole generation of Americans. So are instant messaging, text messaging and message-board posts; but with those, people give you a little more leeway. Form there isn't as important as content; there's a reason to use as few letters as possible and no punctuation. And what you write disappears in the blink of an eye.

E-mail is different. It sticks around to be read and reread, even printed out.

Did she use too many emoticons? Did he really have to write ROFLMAO to show he was laughing? E-mail falls somewhere between a phone call and a letter, but it has rules and pitfalls all its own.

"Instant messaging is better because the interaction is in real time," says Phil Maggio, who writes about Internet dating under the nom de plume Sebastian Chance and found his wife, a native of China, in an Internet chat room. "People reread their e-mails and use words they wouldn't use normally."

When Dinah Larson was single, she and a friend used to read e-mails from guys and decide if they were potential dates based on their e-mailing ability.

"If he wrote like he talked, and was funny? He WON," explained Larson, a 30-year-old marketing director from Los Angeles. "Judgmental, yes, but it was a solid correlation every single time. Of course, this all predated the whole IM-speak phenomenon, but I can't imagine either of us even considering a boy who was too lazy to spell out entire words."

Larson and her future husband, who met at a conference but lived in different cities, fell in love over the Internet, exchanging five or six e-mails a day.

"(He) used to write me AMAZING e-mails," she said. "Now, of course, they're more like, 'If you're stopping by the store on the way home, we need trash sacks.' "

E-mail has become today's version of the stamp-and-envelope letter.

And you, the writer, are judged as such.

How good you are at cyberspace communication could determine your future — at least as far as your love life is concerned.

"If someone doesn't spell 'you' out in an e-mail," said Alexandra Robbins, author of "Conquering Your Quarterlife Crisis" (Perigee Books, 2004), "I assume the writer is in middle school."

There are potential hazards with e-mail as a way to get to know someone before you even strike the first key.

Take a look at your user name, suggests Lesley Carlin McElhattan, an etiquette expert.

"It reflects who you want to be," McElhattan said. "If someone's (address) is starwarsforever@aol.com, be wary."

Still, for anyone who's a little shy, e-mail is safer than making that first call.

"It's easier than fumbling through a voicemail message they can't erase," said Kermit Blaney, a 29-year-old from Canton, Md. "The initial contact of e-mail alleviates all that."

If nothing else, it can be proofread and reworked when it doesn't sound quite right.

"Just as people used to fret about the rules on when to call someone back," said Robbins, "now they agonize for hours over a four-line e-mail. Should I punctuate with a winky face? Will he think it's a cute winky face? A sexy winky face?"

How you present yourself in instant messaging and e-mail has become even more important because so many more people are using dating sites and online communities like MySpace.com.

Sharon Frost, 26, whose photos on MySpace (myspace.com /khoney) draw plenty of admirers, doesn't ask for much from the initial cyberspace message.

"If you just write to me and say, 'You're hot,' I don't bother to answer," she said. "If you say, 'Your elbows are pretty' as a way to break the ice, that's different."

(Frost, who lives in Ellicott City, Md., isn't a fan of "love your tattoos" either.)

Lori Burton, 26 of Parkville, Md., responded to a first contact on a dating site by checking the guy's profile, which seemed interesting, and then sending a two-paragraph, friendly, chatty e-mail with questions. She got this response:

"It been pretty uneventful as of late. Nothing good or bad happening. Well Hope you had a good weekend or our enjoying one. So what is it you do for work. Are your from maryland."

"All spelling and grammar errors aside, even if you struggle with typing, just simply say, 'Hey, I can't type so well. Can I give you a call?'," Burton said. "But this e-mail is an entirely unacceptable and inappropriate response. I just don't have time to get to know someone two sentences at a time. Sorry."

It's a fine line. How short is too short and how long is too long? Strike a balance between being specific but not going overboard, said Kathleen Roldan of Match.com.

"People are put off by very long e-mails," Roldan said. "A rule of thumb is you should see it in one screen. Anything you have to scroll down is too long."

Maybe the biggest problem with e-mail and instant messaging is that cyberspace communication feels almost like talking, but you lose tone and nuance. Sarcasm can come across as just plain mean. That's the main reason emoticons have become so popular (although a "just kidding" works just as well as a smiley face if you're not the smiley-face type).

An e-mail is a first impression, like a first date face-to-face.

McElhattan advises keeping things light if you're getting to know someone by e-mail. And steer clear of religious and political content.

"It can look nosy or proselytizing," she said.

Elizabeth Large of the Baltimore Sun reported and wrote this feature. Advertiser staff writer Catherine E. Toth contributed Hawai'i information to the story. Reach her at 535-8103 or ctoth@honoluluadvertiser.com.

Learn more: www.etiquettegrrls.com

E-MAIL ETIQUETTE