the meaning of cc in email

How often do you use the CC feature when sending emails? Filling in this line, which usually appears directly below the To field, is a convenient and efficient way to send messages to multiple recipients at once. The meaning of cc in email needs a little explaining, but fear not, its nothing close to rocket science.

But what does CC mean in email?

Unless you’re familiar with the days when the main method of communication was to create a paper trail – or a communication record – using plain paper, you may not know where the CC abbreviation comes from.

Carbon paper used for paper
Come closer and I’ll tell you a story about life before the Internet, long before email and CC and BCC fields were as close as our fingertips.

How, you might be wondering, did we communicate before we knew email standards? Sure, we’ve come a long way since the days of pen and ink, but yeah, that’s not it.

Even when the first computers appeared in homes and offices in the 1980s, many people and companies still depended on paper to record, share, or store information.

What if more than one piece of paper is needed?

Enter: carbon paper

To reproduce the information on a piece of paper, one would place a piece of carbon paper between the paper and the one below it.

This “sandwich” of carbon paper allowed people to use a typewriter to type something once and have it appear both on the original paper and on the paper under the carbon layer. The nutrients from the carbon sheet will transfer to the underlying sheet and form “carbon form”.

Therefore, CC stands for “carbon copy”.

The paint that covers the carbon paper is actually carbon black coated in wax to help it stick to the paper and prevent it from fading before use.

Carbon black is a cousin to graphite (commonly found in lead pencils), but has a better texture.

To produce carbon black, air and hydrocarbons such as fuel are injected into the fire where the heat causes the fuel to burn; It is fed at a high temperature by air.

Once the temperature reaches 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit (1,648 degrees Celsius), the unburnt carbon turns into black carbon, which is cooled and brought to life.

For comparison, consider the fact that – at its strongest – molten lava reaches only 2,900 degrees Fahrenheit (1,600 degrees Celsius).

carbon copy today

Well, the book eventually went the way of the dinosaur and the carbon copy eventually spelled out CC, and over time the meaning of CC came to reflect current usage.

It also now refers to courtesy copy, a term that fits its function well when used in email.

Recipients are often cc’ed when they need to see the email but don’t necessarily need to reply to it, or when they are not the original recipient, or even one of the recipients.

The only potential downside to including recipients in the CC field is that whoever sent the email can see other recipients with their email address.

And this is where the BCC field (BCC stands for blind carbon copy) comes in

Located below the CC field, a blind carbon copy (BCC) allows you to send the same email to yourself or multiple people while retaining their email address and the fact that they were copied to privacy.