rec.pets.dogs.breeds

These divisions are read from left to right, so we can tell that this newsgroup is from the part of the recreational subjects hierarchy that deals with pets. Furthermore, it is for questions on dogs, and specifically for debating breeds of dogs. If we were more interested in dog illnesses, we would go to the rec.pets.dogs.health newsgroup.

This simplified diagram shows how these newsgroups fit into just a tiny part of the rec hierarchy:

Major hierarchies of newsgroups include:

These main hierarchies, together with the embryonic humanities hierarchy, traditionally comprise Usenet proper. The major hierarchy outside these is alt (for alternative - the home for the weird and wonderful). Other hierarchies of interest are uk (UK newsgroups are described at http://www.usenet.org.uk/newsgroups.html) and demon.

National hierarchies are indicated by a country code, such as uk or de (for Deutschland, which is Germany). Discussion in foreign groups is usually in the language of the country concerned. If articles appear as gibberish (full of non-alphabetic characters), it could be because the hierarchy is that of a country where our western alphabet is not used. Without software to handle the character set used, messages will display using whichever characters in the ASCII set happen to have the same binary representation. Such hierarchies include fj (Japan), relcom (former Soviet Union) and tw (Taiwan).

Other things to look out for in newsgroup names are: