Email has become one of the dominant forms of communication throughout the world. You use email at work and at home to send notes and pictures to other people. Other than putting the postal service at a loss, there is very little wrong with email. But one common question I was asked during my time working for Comcast was what does CC and BCC means. Well, if you don’t know, here you go!

When you send an email you address it to someone, that way that person (or persons) know that the email is intended for them. That is why you enter their address in the To field. CC is essentially the same thing, it stands for carbon copy. It sends the email to them as well, but when that person is CC’d it is only telling them that they are being sent the message just to observe or just to keep them in the loop. It might be someone that is working on a related project that needs to be kept up to date or just Aunt Jane needing to be kept in the loop about an event. Carbon copy comes from the good ol’ days when people would use carbon paper to make copies of letters (Yes folks, copying something was possible before the copier was invented). Its use is still around today with some businesses receipts.

BCC is also similar. It stands for blind carbon copy. That person is being kept in the loop but the fact that they are doing so is invisible to the other parties. When you see the email headers their address is not included, nor is the BCC field. Use this if you want to send a message but you don’t want everyone included to see all of the other people you sent the email to unlike using the carbon copy or to option.

Only the To field needs to be filled out. An email can be sent without someone being CC’ed or BCC’ed. So there you go, you might have learned something today.

Comments are closed.

Scroll to Top