What Does CC and BCC Mean in Email? How to Use Them?

When you use an email client to send an email to someone, you will see extra options like CC and BCC as well on the screen. Have you ever wondered what does these CC and BCC options mean? There is an option to add the email address of the recipient so what exactly does these other options do and why are they present in your email composer? In this article, we will see exactly what does these BCC and CC stands for and how you can use them when sending emails.

Some email services do not explain the options available in the Compose Email section and that’s the reason we are sharing this article. Whenever you are writing an email, you will see 3 different options – To, CC and BCC. The first option is self explanatory as it refers to the email address of the person you want to send the email to. The other two options are quite important and once you learn what they mean, you will start using them as well. So let’s get started with out article and learn what CC and BCC mean and how to use them effectively.

What Does CC And BCC Mean in Email?

When you use Gmail.com account to send emails, then you will see that there is only To option available in the email composer by default. However, you can make the other two options visible by clicking on their link.

Refer to the image below to see how you can display the Cc: and Bcc: options as well with the To: option. You simply have to click on them.

CC stands for “Carbon Copy” – You can use this option to add multiple email addresses separated with a comma and it will send a copy of your email to everyone on the list including the email addres in the To field. Anyone included in the To or CC field will be able to see the email addresses of other recipient’s as well.

BCC stands for “Blind Carbon Copy” – This option also works similarly to the CC option. You can add multiple email addresses, separated by a comma, to this field and a copy of the email will be sent to everyone. However, unlike the CC option, anyone put on the BCC list won’t be able to see who else is included in the email except for the user in the To field.

How to Use CC and BCC Effectively?

When you want to send an email to several people, it is a better idea to use the BCC field to enter their email addresses. The reason is that with BCC, the recipients won’t know the email addresses of other people.

If you use CC option, all the email addresses will be visible to each and every recipient. Most of the users won’t like their email address to become public information.

Moreover, by using the BCC field, you can make the users feel that you have sent an email to only him or her and not anyone else. A great way to use BCC is to add your own alternate email address in the To field and add all the other email addresses in the BCC field, so that only your email address is visible to the recipients.

So that was the complete article about the meaning of CC and BCC and how you can use them effectively. I hope that now everything is clear and if you have any friends who don’t know what CC and BCC means or what they stand for, then share this article with them.

Featured Image Credits to Stuart Miles at FreeDigitalPhotos.net!