Now, I know what you’re thinking: “Who cares about some stupid encoding? Just send the damn email!” But let me tell ya, friendo, if you dont understand how these things work, your emails might not look quite right when they arrive at their destination. And that can be embarrassing!

So, let’s dive in and learn all about encodings in email headers.

First off, what is an encoding? Well, it’s a way to represent characters using a different set of symbols or numbers than the ones you see on your keyboard. This might seem like overkill for something as simple as sending an email, but trust me, it’s necessary in some cases.

In email headers, there are two main encodings: UTF-8 and Quoted Printable (QP). Lets take a closer look at each one.

UTF-8 is the most common encoding used in emails today. It can handle pretty much any character you might want to use, including accented letters, emojis, and even characters from other languages like Chinese or Japanese. The cool thing about UTF-8 is that it’s backwards compatible with ASCII (the standard set of 7-bit English characters), so if your email only contains ASCII text, the encoding will be much smaller than QP.

QP, on the other hand, is a bit more complicated. It was designed to handle non-ASCII characters in emails that were sent before UTF-8 became popular. The way it works is by converting each character into its ASCII equivalent and then adding some extra information (like “=” signs) to indicate how many bits are needed to represent the original character.

Here’s an example of what a QP encoded email might look like:

// Set the content transfer encoding to quoted-printable
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable

// Set the sender's email address
From: Pepé Le Pew <[email protected]>

// Set the email subject
Subject: Ayons asperges pour le déjeuner

// Add a greeting
Salut!

// Add a message
Cela ressemble à un excellent recipie[1] déjeuner.

// The following code is an example of a QP encoded email, where each character is converted into its ASCII equivalent and extra information is added to indicate the number of bits needed to represent the original character. This was a common encoding method before UTF-8 became popular.

As you can see, the subject line and body of the email have been converted to QP encoding. The “+” sign indicates that a newline is coming up (since QP doesn’t handle line breaks very well), and the “[1]” has been replaced with its ASCII equivalent (“[01]”) plus some extra information about how many bits are needed to represent it.

So, why would you want to use QP instead of UTF-8? Well, there are a few reasons:

1. Compatibility: If your email client doesn’t support UTF-8 (or if the recipient’s mail server doesn’t), then QP might be your only option for sending non-ASCII characters.

2. Size: As I mentioned earlier, QP can result in a larger message size than UTF-8 because of all those extra “=” signs and other information. But if you have a limited amount of bandwidth or storage space, then QP might be the better choice for keeping your emails small.

3. Legacy: Some older email systems (like Lotus Notes) don’t handle UTF-8 very well, so using QP can help ensure that those messages will still look okay when they arrive at their destination.

A brief overview of encodings in email headers and why they matter. Remember: if your emails aren’t looking quite right, check the encoding to see if it might be causing problems. And if all else fails, just send a plain text message with no fancy characters or emojis that way you can’t go wrong!