Cc

Stands for "Carbon Copy."

Cc is one of the standard email address fields. It is meant for secondary recipients of a message, while the To field is for its primary recipients. All email addresses in a message's Cc field receive a copy of the message, and will also receive any replies sent using the Reply All command. The term comes from the historic use of carbon paper to create copies of written documents and forms.

Standard email courtesy reserves the Cc field for secondary recipients of an email message who benefit from being informed of the message's contents but whose input is not necessary. The To field, on the other hand, is for the primary participants in the exchange. For example, two coworkers discussing how to split up tasks in a project would exchange emails with each other's address in the To field; adding their manager's email address to the Cc field will keep them in the loop. In effect, the Cc field is an 'FYI' field.

Every recipient of an email can see the addresses in both the To and Cc fields. The Blind Carbon Copy (Bcc) address field is for situations where a sender wants to hide a recipient's email address from other recipients. The Bcc field can keep a single recipient secret or prevent recipients of a mass email from knowing everyone else's email address. Addresses in the Bcc field will also not receive replies if another recipient sends a Reply All message.