Why use "CC"?

Carbon copy - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The CC recipients are revealed to all recipients, and this may not be desirable, depending on the situation. An alternative field, BCC, or Blind Carbon Copy, is available for hidden notification. In common usage, To field recipients are the primary audience of the message, CC field recipients are others whom the author wishes to publicly inform of the message, and BCC field recipients are those surreptitiously being informed of the communication.

Obviously this is one of those topics that just popped into my head about 20 minutes ago. I got to wondering, in this day and age, why anyone would use a "CC:" field in an email. All popular mail clients and web-based email sites allow you to put scads of email addresses in the "To" field -- so, why would I every use a "CC"? A passable answer is found in the Wikipedia (the sum of all useful human knowledge). Apparently, recipients of CC'd messages aren't necessarily expected to reply; they're simply being notified. One might CC one's supervisor to make him aware of the message, but he's not expected to take action.



Interesting, huh?



I use BCC when sending forwards, of course. Lately, I've been BCC'ing people on messages that I didn't want the primary recipients (those in the "To:" box) to know I was communicating with. Apparently, I shouldn't be talking to certain people right now. Long story. I'm rambling. :)

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