Email Message Format and Example

Email Tutorials - Herong's Tutorial Examples

∟Email Message Format and Example

This section describes the email message format. A very simple email message is also provided.

The email message format can be described by the following rules:

An email message consists of 2 sections: header section and body section.
The header section and the body section are separated by the first blank line in the message.
The header section is a list of header lines.
A header line consists of a header name and its value, separated by (: ).
A header line must be coded in printable characters and spaces.
A long header value can be continued on subsequent lines with indent spaces.
All header lines must meet requirements specified in SMTP and related protocols.

Here is a simple email message example. It contains 6 basic header lines and 1 line of message body.

Message-Id: <20231113111946.5EABD266002B@mail.herongyang.com>
Date: 15 Nov 2023 06:19:34 -0500 (EST)
From: joe@herongyang.com

Hello world!

Note that most email client tools are not displaying email messages directly to you. Technical email headers are removed. Message contents are re-formatted. To see the original email messages, you need to use the "view message source", "view raw message", or similar function.