What can an email address contain (and what can’t)?

We don't always manage to create an email address with ease. What are the reasons? Are there some characters that can't be used? Here are the answers

Although we live in an era dominated by technology, there are still some people who have some difficulty with choosing the correct name for their email. You must have fallen for it at least once in your life.

Not every character on the keyboard can be used to create an email address. And the risk is to spend minutes - if not hours - in front of the computer trying to get the green light from the service provider. Frustrating when the server returns a sentence that sounds more or less like this: "the chosen characters are not recognized" ? Do you want to know what you can - and what you cannot - write in the e-mail address? Follow these valuable tips and you will never be wrong again.

The parts that make up an email: the domain

First of all: let's start by understanding how an email address is formed. An email is composed of two elements: [email protected] (or @domain.com, @domain.net, .org and many others) divided, as you can see from the example, by the character called Snail. What is the domain? It is the server where we register our e-mail address and which allows us to send and receive e-mail messages. There are free ones and also payment ones. And then there is the part about the name we want to give to our email, which can be chosen by the user, imposed or recommended by the provider.

The parts that make up an email: the user name

So let's say that, after finding a mail service, we have to decide the name to give to the account. We can use our first and last name or opt for a nick name. It all depends on the use we make of it. It is unprofessional to use the nickname [email protected] to look for a job.

Now let's start describing which characters are allowed and which are not recognized when creating an email address. We must also consider that the name we choose may be used by another person. This further complicates the creation of our email. Let's see how to do it.

Which characters to choose (and avoid)

The username is made of words and each word - which is called atom - can be separated by a dot or a dash: [email protected]. An atom is made up of characters that are called ASCII, an alphanumeric encoding standard. What elements can our e-mail address contain? Almost all alphanumeric characters minus: parentheses (any type), commas, quotation marks, apostrophes, erasers, asterisks and other signs such as monetary ($, €), commercial (&) and mathematical (+).

Everything else is allowed: upper and lower case letters, underscore and underscore, numbers from 1 to 9. Now you have all the tools you need to write a correct e-mail address and avoid any future confusion.

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