People are often curious about what your email can contain and what it cannot. If you are like us and even wonder about what email addresses can contain or what they cannot, follow along.
Can you have apostrophe in email address?
You should know a few things before you try to insert an apostrophe in an email address. For one, email providers may not recognize the character. This will affect how your email is delivered to recipients. Apostrophes are a special character in most programming languages and, as such, can sometimes cause unexpected behaviour in your recipient email server or your email client. If you use an apostrophe in your email address, it might not be delivered at all or even be rejected entirely. Hence, it’s best advised that most people should avoid using an apostrophe in their email addresses.
In technical documents, the apostrophe is sometimes called a single quote. The apostrophe is allowed as part of the email address in RFC 3696, the standard for email addresses. As long as you put the apostrophe before the @ symbol, it’s allowed according to the specification document.
Can email addresses have hyphens?
Adding hyphens to email addresses is possible. The hyphen character, also known as a negative sign or subtract, is located on US keyboards on the underscore key. This symbol is legally permitted in email addresses, but we cannot use it to start or end an address or separate a domain name from its local part. However, as long as you stay within the size restrictions, you can use dashes as part of your email addresses.
In addition to hyphens, email addresses can also contain other special characters like ‘#’. However, we cannot place hyphens in front of a dot. We can use them in the local part of an email address, but many ESPs enforce their policies. A hyphen is permitted in an email address, depending on the service provider.
Can email addresses have special characters?
Although hyphens, minus signs, plus signs and dashes are all technically valid email address characters, so using them in your email address is not a rule violation. However, email service providers (like Mutant Mail) might use them for special use and restrict these particular characters.
You should also avoid using characters like ‘plus’, ‘#’ and ‘equal’ in your email address as they can become unprofessional and clutter your address. Besides, lowercase letters, numbers, dashes, and underscores are also allowed in your email address. These characters can be tricky to remember and can confuse your recipients.
Can email addresses have capital letters?
Yes, it’s possible to use capital letters in email addresses. However, be aware that not all email servers recognize capital letters. You can use uppercase letters or a mixture of both. This may make it difficult to read, but most modern email servers do not. Regardless of the reason, it’s always a good idea to use lowercase letters in your email address. If you’re unsure about what case to use, read this article.
Although email addresses are not case-sensitive, they do not look great in mixed cases. The incorrect syntax can lead to bounces and validity failures.
Can email addresses have accented characters?
If you live in a country with accented characters, you may wonder if you can send or receive emails with those accents. Not many email providers support these characters, but some already do, including Gmail. Google has already mentioned that users can send and receive emails with non-Latin characters using Gmail. Google also hopes to add support for these accented characters in the future.
Although it is not common for email addresses to contain accented characters, they can make communication more difficult. For example, Turkish speakers would never write i for i, but a correspondent in another language might. Using a slightly misspelt address is more convenient for both parties. Furthermore, Scandinavian languages have different spellings of the letter O. In these cases, a misspelt version may be easier to read.
You can also use lowercase letters, numbers, dashes, and underscores in your email address. The only exception to this is the SPACE character.
Can email addresses have underscores?
Underscores are symbols in email addresses. Like a hyphen, they’re used to indicate spaces. They’re the same width as letters, always at the bottom of the character space. The underscore character joins two words or separates letters and numbers. It demonstrates space in IP addresses, website user names, and email addresses.
Email addresses can include hyphens or other special characters. However, these characters may not be allowed in some email services, such as Gmail and Yahoo!, but many email services do allow them. Understanding the proper syntax can help you get the email address you always wanted. However, you may need to manually verify an email address to ensure it contains the correct address. This is time-consuming and ambiguous. Make sure you have the right email service provider and know their policies.
Can email addresses have commas?
Commas are used as an address separator when sending emails. Though semi-colons are also sometimes used as an email address separator, the comma is the default separator in most cases.
As commas contain special meaning, they are not allowed to be used in email addresses.
Can email addresses have spaces?
Spaces are not part of Internet mail address space systems, as they are the separator chars used in syntax analyzers. A well-programmed email system removes spaces before processing email ids. However, adding spaces in an email address would cause misbehaviour.
However, you can use a hyphen or underscore characters in an email address to denote space, but you should remember that some email providers don’t recognize these characters. It would be best if you always used them only in the local part of the address, as they don’t always work well with some email providers. They are also ambiguous and cumbersome. For this reason, most people avoid them.
Conclusion :
In conclusion, email addresses can have various characters, including apostrophes, hyphens, capital letters, accented characters, underscores and commas. However, spaces are not allowed. Be sure to check the specific requirements of your email provider before creating an address.