CC meaning in email: carbon copy

To, Cc and Bcc, line by line

An email has three address lines, and the internet mail standard says the only difference between them is how each one is used. To holds the primary recipients. Cc holds others who should get the message, even though it may not be aimed at them. Bcc holds recipients whose addresses the rest of the list never sees.

In office terms, the To line is who should act and the Cc line is who should know. Reply all goes back to both lines, so a CC is also a promise of every reply that follows.

Where carbon copy comes from

The mail standard spells the name out: Cc means carbon copy, in the sense of a copy typed through carbon paper onto a second sheet. Carbon copy in that sense dates from 1876. Business letters ended with “cc:” and the names of everyone who got a copy, and email kept the label after the carbon paper went. Cc became a verb, as in “I’ll cc you”, in 1983. Some people read the letters as courtesy copy, which keeps the abbreviation and loses the stationery.

The blind copy

Bcc means blind carbon copy: the recipient gets the email and nobody else on it can tell. In Outlook the Bcc box stays hidden until you switch it on, and once on, it shows on every new message until you switch it off. Only the sender can see the Bcc names afterwards, in Sent Items.

The standard itself points out the weak spot. A blind recipient who hits reply all sends their answer to the whole visible list, and in doing so tells everyone they had a copy all along.

That makes Bcc the right line for one job: an email to a long list of outside people who don’t know each other, such as clients or event guests. Each gets the message, and nobody gets everyone else’s address.

Copying the manager

Adding someone’s manager to the Cc line changes an email without changing a word of it. A request becomes a request with a witness, and the reply time starts being measured. “Looping in Priya for visibility” means Priya will now see how fast you answer, and so will you.

The most annoying habit in the inbox

Copying people in for no reason tops the list of email habits that annoy British office workers, at 44%. Long-winded emails come second at 43%. Gen Z minds the extra CCs most, at 49%, and millennials and boomers least, at 42% each. Two of the tags in the plain-English jargon dictionary, FYA and NRN, exist to cut the confusion: one says act, the other says don’t reply.

Bigger lists

Mass emails, with 20 or more recipients, rose 7% in a year, while one-to-one threads fell 5%. Each extra name on the Cc line is one more person who can reply all, and one more who has to decide not to.

The please-remove-me chain

The classic CC disaster starts with an announcement sent to a whole division, with a mailing list on the Cc line. Someone replies all to ask to be taken off the list. Four people reply all to say they didn’t sign up for this either. Then six more reply all asking everyone to stop replying all. The original announcement was about saving time in meetings.

When you’re on the Cc line

Read it, file it, and act only if someone asks you by name. If the thread stopped concerning you three weeks ago, ask the sender, privately, to take you off it. A CC’d email that does ask you to do something means you were put on the wrong line. Ask to be moved to To, or treat it as FYA and say so.

An email that ends with NRN frees the whole list, CC’d or not. Anyone who joins a thread after it starts gets a forward instead of a CC, with the history attached.

Engines, captions and clouds

On an engine, cc means cubic centimetres, so a 750cc motorbike has a 750 cubic centimetre engine. Dictionaries also list CC for closed-captioned, community college, country club and chief clerk. Written Cc, it’s cirrocumulus, a type of cloud. Of all of them, the email one generates the most paperwork.

An email that cc’s the boss

Subject: RE: Laptop refresh, still waiting

Hi Tom, cc’ing Priya so she’s aware copying your boss in. My laptop was due in the August refresh and the battery now lasts 40 minutes. I can collect the new one from the IT desk any day this week.