Next: Mail Headers Up: Sending Mail
The Format of the Mail Buffer
In addition to the "text" or "body", a message has "header fields"
which say who sent it, when, to whom, why, and so on. Some header
fields such as the date and sender are created automatically after the
message is sent. Others, such as the recipient names, must be
specified by you in order to send the message properly.
Mail mode provides a few commands to help you edit some header
fields, and some are preinitialized in the buffer automatically at
times. You can insert or edit any header fields using ordinary editing
The line in the buffer that says
--text follows this line--
is a special delimiter that separates the headers you have specified
from the text. Whatever follows this line is the text of the message;
the headers precede it. The delimiter line itself does not appear in
the message actually sent. The text used for the delimiter line is
controlled by the variable `mail-header-separator'.
Here is an example of what the headers and text in the `*mail*'
buffer might look like.
CC: email@example.com, firstname.lastname@example.org
Subject: The Emacs Manual
--Text follows this line--
Please ignore this message.
automatically generated by info2www