CC

Renaud Garelli

CC, which stands for “Carbon Copy“, is a computer term used in connection with emailing.

When an email is sent, the main recipient to whom it is addressed is specified in the “To” field.
However, it is also possible to include other recipients in the copy of this email, so that they are aware of the information transmitted, even if they are not the main recipient: the “CC” field is designed precisely for this purpose.
In this way, a person receiving an email and seeing that he is simply being copied (cc) will know that the email is primarily addressed to another interlocutor, and that the sender is probably not expecting a specific response from him on this particular email.

 

The CC function is very often used, particularly in the context of exchanges between professionals within the same structure, where one person addresses another on a technical, commercial or even functional aspect, while including other people who are related to the subject in question and who therefore need to be aware of the information transmitted.
Even if he is not the main recipient, it is quite possible that a person who has been copied (cc) may also wish to reply to that specific email, and can do so simply by clicking on “reply” and writing the desired text. That person will then be automatically removed from the copy (cc) section of the conversation, as he will become the new sender of an email, and will choose who to include again in his own reply (in particular, he can deliberately choose to include or remove people in the “A” and “CC” fields of his reply).

 

A common feature of the “A” and “CC” fields of an email is that, whatever the recipient(s) put in these fields, each person receiving the email will be aware of all the people who have also received it, as they will all appear as recipients or as a copy (cc) of the email. This is the main difference with the other common copy feature used in email, known as blind carbon copy (BCC).