Simple Internet Mail Message: An Example

Topic Last Modified: 2006-06-11

As you can see in the following sample of a message's contents, the format described in RFC 822 produces messages readable with little difficulty by humans.

The first few lines, from the first instance of "Received" to "Precedence," are headers. These lines define the recipients, the sender, the date, and other information involved with message transmission.

Following the headers is a blank line. This is marked by the consecutive occurrence of the four characters CR, LF, CR, and LF. The body of the message starts after this blank line. In the following example, only the final few lines make up the message body.

Received: from someone@example.com 
Message-Id: <v0214040cad6a13935723@>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
Date: Thursday, 4 Jun 1998 09:43:14 -0800
To: project-discussion@example.com
From: Nina Marton <nina@example.com>
Subject: Happy Birthday
Precedence: bulk

Happy Birthday!
See you this evening,
Nina