Re: [PATCH] documentation: send-email: use camel case consistently

From: Dragan Simic <dsimic@manjaro.org>
Date: Feb 21, 2024, 07:50 UTC
Message-ID: <d2239d5a88ccf9806cf2873f00adc336@manjaro.org>
In-Reply-To: <CAPx1GvcGhZLqHVz9=ZW-w+ebP64-8FpPSb_ef7ygXzDDTze2bA@mail.gmail.com>

On 2024-02-21 01:43, Chris Torek wrote:

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> On Tue, Feb 20, 2024 at 8:42 AM Dragan Simic <dsimic@manjaro.org> 
> wrote:
>> I've never ever seen anyone referring to email headers as "TO", "CC" 
>> or
>> "BCC".  It's always referred to as "To", "Cc" and "Bcc".
> 
> I used some email system (back in the early 1980s) that did that.  It
> felt weird even then. I can't remember if it was some CSMail (CSNet)
> or MH(Rand Mail Handler) version that did it.

That's interesting, it shows that different variants were used in the very early days of email. Maybe even the all-lowercase "cc" and "bcc" variants were used somewhere, at least because RFC2076 (better said, the RFCs that predate it) specifies them.

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>> Thus, "cc" stems from the old age of literal carbon copies ...
> 
> That's correct.  However:
> 
>> and "bcc" was seemingly coined when email took over.
> 
> "Blind Carbon Copies" predated email, but required adding the
> notation separately, if it was to be added at all. (I'm just old enough
> to remember using carbon copies myself, but not old enough to
> know what Standard Office Practice was at that time.)

Thanks for the correction. You're right, I was lazy enough not to check that blind carbon copies predate the age of email. [1]

I'm also old enough to remember the literal carbon copies, I even made a few dozens of them myself on a mechanical typewriter. They usually left me with dirty fingertips. :) Though, I'm also not old enough to know what the common office practice was like back then.

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> Whether adding a "bcc" notation was common I don't know;
> it seems it would be easier to leave it off if you made, say, one
> original and a total of 2 copies, one "blinded".
> 
> (As your Wikipedia link notes, there was a practical limit to how
> many carbon copies one could make in the first place.)

Exactly, it was the limitation of mechanical typewriters. Perhaps the limit was around four or five carbon copies.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blind_carbon_copy