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Some email terms to get familiarized with

  • Attachment: A file that is sent along with the regular email message.
  • BCC: Stands for blind carbon copy. While sending an email to several people, you may want to send a copy of the message also to a person, whose email address you do not want the other people in the mail to know. While the email ids addressed in ‘To’ and ‘CC’ are visible to everyone receiving a copy of the email, ids addressed in BCC are not visible and hence other user can not from looking at the email know that the mail was sent to that person as well.
  • Body: The main part of an email containing the message to be transmitted. This may consist of text or graphics.
  • Bounced message: An email message which could not be delivered and hence was returned back to the sender’s mailbox.
  • CC: Stands for carbon copy, it is an option of copying the email communications to people intended to be witness to the conversation.
  • Email client: A user interface designed to read and send emails.
  • Email server: Email server is responsible for the actual receipt and delivery of emails. Email clients when receiving the command of sending an email from a user pass the mail to email servers which then transmit it across the internet.
  • Forward: Forward is the capability with many email interfaces which allows the user to send the exact same email to other users.
  • Inbox: Inbox is like the traditional mailbox, wherein you can log in to see the emails received by you.
  • Signature: Signature is a few lines of text appended at the end of a mail message to provide the reader with the author's contact information, favourite quote, web site address, etc. Most email softwares store the signature and append it automatically at the end of message sent by the user.
  • Spam:A spam is simply any unsolicited mail you received, which you would not have liked to. They are generally sent in bulk and are meant for advertising purposes. Some spam mails may also contain viruses.
  • Subject: Subject is a one-liner to describe what your email is all about.