Blind Carbon Copy

An emailing term.

A blind carbon copy or "bcc" are those people who are not directly involved with the email but they need to see it for information purposes. The people in the 'To' fields and perhaps the 'cc' fields will not see who received the blind copies.

For example, you may send an email to a colleague using the 'To' field, then you may 'bcc' a copy to your manager for reference.

The original 'carbon copy' was a typist technique to create a copy of a letter without having to retype it all again. The typist would insert a blue coloured 'carbon copy' sheet in between two sheets of paper and insert them all into the typewriter. Then as the keys would press their characters on the top sheet the blue carbon sheet duplicated them on the sheet beneath.

See also 'Carbon Copy' or cc in the glossary.

2020-10