Unit 1: Email addresses

Unit 1: Email addresses

E-mail addresses are essential in business – do you know how to say them correctly?

Email addresses

Every email address contains this sign: . Here are some email addresses:

bob@yahoo.bh
jeffery.amherst@britishcouncil.org
reservations@beachhotelbern.com

As you can see, Bob uses his first name only in his email address: bob@yahoo.bh. Jeffery Amherst uses his first name and surname in his email address: jeffery.amherst@britishcouncil.org. The address reservations@beachhotelbern.com gives the name of the department (Reservations), but not the name of the person.

Saying email addresses

When you say an email address:

  • remember that @ is pronounced ‘at’ and . is pronounced 'dot'. reservations@beachhotelbern.com is ‘reservations at beach hotel bern dot com’
  • sometimes there is a . in the person's name. jeffery.amherst@britishcouncil.org is ‘jeffery dot amherst at british council dot org’
  • _ in an email address is called ‘underscore’. teaching_ job@english_academy.id is ‘teaching underscore job at English underscore academy dot I D’.

Note that it is not necessary to use capital J and A in Jeffery Amherst's email address. People sometimes write email addresses with capital initial letters (Jeffery.Amherst@britishcouncil.org). Sometimes it is all in capitals (JEFFERY.AMHERST@BRITISHCOUNCIL.ORG). However, most people write email addresses without capital letters (jeffery.amherst@britishcouncil.org).

Address books

Email addresses appear in alphabetical order (A–Z). When names start with the same letter, look at the second letter. Here, all the names begin with F, but the second letters are: e i r u. These are in alphabetical order.

Name Email address
Fellah fellah@bqbaccounting.com
Fida fhussein@arabianairways.org
Fred Aston fred99@astoncity.biz
Fudail H fudailh@aglant.net

 

Domain names

Email addresses often include the name of the country that the address is from. This is the final two letters of the address. Here are some examples:

.af Afghanistan
.id Indonesia
.ma Morocco
.se Sweden
.uy Uruguay

Task 1

Task 2

Task 3

Task 4

Task 5

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Submitted by snaji on Fri, 09/02/2024 - 19:03

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Thank you so much for this

Submitted by Trang Luu on Fri, 24/03/2023 - 07:28

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Thank you for the lesson. It is very helpful for me when I learn listening skill.

Submitted by 611Andres on Fri, 24/02/2023 - 23:58

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this is something that i needed to learn, thanks!

Submitted by micarrzw94 on Thu, 08/09/2022 - 19:29

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Hi! Is it ok to write "write to me AT 123@ gmail.com" or is it "write to me TO 123@ gmail.com "? Thank you!!!

Hi micarrzw94,

Yes, "at" is the right preposition here.

But, use "to" with the verb "send", e.g. "Send the document to [email address]."

Jonathan

The LearnEnglish Team

Submitted by rodrigodynalogic on Thu, 08/09/2022 - 00:33

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Hi,

This is a good exercise to practice sending emails in english, in this exercise I learned several words to help to understand the structure of email better. Underscore is a new word for me, because I usually create a new email with this but I didn´t know the name of this.

bye

Submitted by jyoti Chaudhary on Wed, 25/05/2022 - 10:58

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this is very easy for me. when I started my first job my boss taught me how to prepare an email id and how to use it.

Submitted by Kibidango on Mon, 04/04/2022 - 11:50

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Thank you so much for showing us how to read email addresses.
Actually, we say @ as ' atmark' in my work place.
Furthermore, most business people who use English at work in my country seem to regard the way calling @ atmark as normal business English.