Ever had a problem saying an e-mail address?

 

You may have a very good level of English, but have you ever had a problem saying an e-mail address? Even some of my advanced students make basic mistakes with e-mail addresses. But don’t worry, by the end of this lesson, you’ll be able to say e-mail addresses perfectly!

Ready? OK, let’s go!

*e-mail – we use the hyphen, but you can write it without too: e-mail / email

1 @

This symbol @ is “at”. For example:
ben@yahoo.com

2 .com

This symbol (.) is a dot. For example:
andy@gmail.com

3 All together!

Notice how we say the company names as mostly complete words. For example:
nick33@hotmail.com
georgina99@yahoo.com
colette22@gmail.com
nate33@bluenet.com

We often tell people about this:
“That’s ‘bluenet’ – all one word – dot com.”

4 Upper & lower case

It’s also important to let people know about capital letters. We could indicate that it’s “lowercase” or “upper case”. We often tell people this by saying something like:
“That’s nate33 – all lower case – at bluenet dot com.”

Or:
“That’s NATE33 – all upper case – at bluenet dot com.”

5 Endings

If the dot is followed by an organisation such as “org” or “net”, we often say them as a word. For example:
ben@iloveenglish.org
sam@twotimes.net

However, if it’s a country code, we usually pronounce each letter of the country code separately.
For example:
Australia jenny@live.au
Canada pete@zone.ca
the USA poppy@bluenet.us
the UK jack@signal.co.uk

6 Dash / underscore

We say dash* for this symbol: ( – )
frank@help-me.com

And underscore for this symbol: (_)
sarah@work_shop.com

*dash – some people also use the term “hyphen” too.

Here are some useful expressions to use with e-mails.

• What’s your e-mail address?
• Could I get your e-mail address, please?
• What’s your company e-mail address, please?
• Is that all lowercase?
• Is that all one word?
• I’ll send the e-mail as soon as I get into the office.
• Did you get the e-mail I sent you last week?
• I’m sorry but I haven’t had time to reply to the e-mail yet.
• Could you forward me that e-mail, please?
• Could you forward the e-mail to everyone on the list, please?

A: Could you spell that out for me, please?
B: Yes, that’s P for parrot, E for egg and T for time – PET.