email

[potterfan3]

What do the boxes Cc and Bcc mean in emails?

[lady_p_gold]

They mean, I think ... carbon copy and blind carbon copy (in other words if you wanted to include someone in the e mail but not let the others know that they had been included)

[Coobeastie]

ladypgold is right.

[brachiopod]

As lady_p says, cc. is carbon copy.

Back in the days before photocopiers, word-processors and laser printers, if you wanted to send a letter to say, two people, rather than typing the same letter twice, you would feed two sheets of typing paper into the typewriter (foolscap of course!) with a sheet of carbon paper between them.

As you hammered away at the keys, the carbon paper would leave an imprint on the second sheet of paper and hey presto! Two copies.

Out of courtesy, or when you wanted one or both recipients to know the other had also received a copy, you would type cc. and the names of the recipients underneath.

I must admit however, that I had never encountered bcc.used prior to e-mail being introduced.

[lady_p_gold]

Well yes that is correct and also, it seems amazing now, if you made a typing error you had to put little bits of paper between every carbon copy, then rub out the top copy with a typewriter rubber, then pull the bits of paper out and type the correct letter. When you took dictation your boss would sometimes say 'and a blind copy to so and so', and so it has continued. Ah those were the days ........

[wideboy]

Amazing what pops up on the right hand side in Answerbank. This thread had Blind Carbon Copy as a link which then gave this:-

http://www.thetechdictionary.com/term/bcc_(blind_carbon_ copy) />
When sending an e-mail, if you BCC someone you are sending him or her a copy of your e-mail, but not allowing the recipients in the "To" or "CC" fields of your e-mail client to know that the BCC recipient was sent the message as well. BCC is often used for covert company communications, such as if you are getting irritated at someone and want to let someone else in on it without alerting the party you are irritated about, or if you are sending the CEO of your company a mail telling him or her he or she is wrong about something and want to BCC copies to your friends to gloat over it. Use BCC with caution. One of the most common uses of BCC is when sending mass e-mails; just send the e-mail to yourself and BCC it to the whole group you are sending to. That way, your mailing list is not known to any of the members.