What do CC and BCC mean in an email?

You may have seen the acronyms CC and BCC when writing an email and you may not know what they mean. Don’t worry, because in this article we will explain what they mean, where they come from and how you can use them.

Literally, CC stands for «carbon copy» (from the English “carbon copy”) and CCO «blind carbon copy» (from the English “Blind Carbon Copy”). These are two very common functions in emails, whose origin dates back to the era in which there were typewriters. CC refers to copies that were made in the past on paper using carbon paper between the sheets (hence, carbon copy).

In the digital age, the term CC is used in an email when a copy of the message is sent to other people In addition to the primary recipient, everyone who receives the email can see the addresses of the other contacts included in that field.

BCC serves a very similar function to CC in that it sends a copy to other recipients. However, in this scenario, the recipient addresses placed in the BCC field will always remain hidden. This means that other people involved in the email have no way of seeing who else the email has been sent to.

How to use CC and BCC correctly

The CC and BCC functions are located on the right side of the screen when you write an email in Gmail, or at the top of an email manager like Microsoft Outlook.

Their position will depend on the email program or system you are using. You should know that they will be disabled by default, but you can activate them by clicking on the option you want, or by directly adding the recipients.

What is CC used for?

The correct use of these will depend on the context in which you are sending the email and the purpose of your communication as such. You can use CC when you want several recipients to be aware of that conversation, without this implying that you expect any kind of response from them.

For example, it is common to use it in work environments to keep employees or managers informed who may not be directly involved in the conversation, but who may need to know how a specific issue is progressing.

It is recommended that you try to use it carefully. Make sure that all recipients are actually relevant to the conversation, since everyone will see who else you have sent the email to.

What is CCO used for?

On the other hand, BCC is an option that you can use when you have to send an email to several recipients, but you do not want them to find out who else has received the same message.

This can be important in situations where the privacy of what you send is very important, such as sending a mass email to clients or people who don’t really know each other.

It’s also useful when you need to include someone in the conversation without the others knowing that you’ve done so. In fact, with BCC you can prevent recipients from unnecessarily replying to everyone involved in the email. In this way, you reduce the possibility of generating unnecessary emails or creating long conversation chains that can distort the initial message.

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