When you open an E-mail message, take notice of who is on copy. All messages come from only one person but many others may be copied. There are three fields: TO, CC, and BCC. TO is the person or persons that need to understand and take action on the contents of your note. CC is “carbon copy”, an old typewriter term for those who may be interested but are not directly involved in your conversation with the people on the TO list. BCC stands for “blind carbon copy” and is rarely used.
For example, somebody sends a message to all employees in the building saying that they are going to be away for a few hours at an off-site meeting. Most read the message and say to themselves, “That’s interesting”, and go about their daily business. However, one employee has a question and replies-all saying “Thanks for letting me know, I’ll see you when you get back”. Does the whole building need to know this? I think not! The proper thing to do in the case is to “Reply” only to the sender rather than to “Reply-All”.
Think before you send a reply; is it really necessary to reply to everybody or just to the sender?
David Robert Lambert 
2011/06/14 at 12:47 |
Although BCC is rarely used, it can be useful at times. For example, if a newsletter editor is requesting input from the whole company, they can send the E-mail to themselves and BCC all the other employees. This technique “hides” the E-mail addresses of the dozens, hundreds or even thousands of E-mail addresses that will receive the notice. Then, even if another employee does a “reply-all” by mistake, the note will go back only to the originator, not to the whole company.