Having a Gmail or Outlook Account is a Plus, Period!

Having a Gmail or Outlook Account is a Plus, Period!

By now, most of us know we can use periods to create multiple Gmail addressing scenarios using a single Gmail account (I love being wordy). For instance, you.are.not.eb@gmail.com is the same as youarenoteb@gmail.com.

And my.grammar.is.not.as.bad.as.you.think@gmail.com is the same as

mygrammarisnot.as.bad.as.you.think@gmail.com

is the same as…

mygrammarisnotasbadasyouthink@gmail.com

Or, if you dare, I.dodge.darcys.email@gmail.com is the same as

idodgedarcysemail@gmail.com.

One important rule though – you can’t use a period directly before the @ sign in your email address. No, I tells ya! That’s a big no-no!

This is for Gmail users. Period.

However, do not try the above with Outlook.com accounts or you’ll be sorry because you won’t get any mail addressed to you that way and you’ll be wasting time thinking of clever email addresses such as I have had while writing this. If you want to be clever with periods (or dots) then you, my friend, need a Gmail account.  And if you hurry, you might still find that eb.rides.a.broom@gmail.com is still available for you.

This is for Gmail PLUS Outlook users

The headline is not just a pun. You can plus your way to add additional email addresses (without additional accounts) with Gmail and Outlook.com using a plus sign. So, if you are writing the CIA (I don’t advise you do that unless you really need company badly) you can use YourUserName+CIA@gmail.com. For example, AbrahamTuwitze+CIA@gmail.com or AbrahamTuwitze+CIA@outlook.com. See? This gives you zillions of new email addresses and while needing only one account.

Think of the possibilities:

AbrahamTuwitze+Electric_company_complaint@gmail.com

AbrahamTuwitze+Cable_Company_Stinks@outlook.com

AbrahamTuwitze+Love_Cloudeight@gmail.com

AbrahamTuwitze+Love_Cloudeight@outlook.com

AbrahamTuwitze+General-Martins-Guns@outlook.com

AbrahamTuwitze+General-Martins-Guns@gmail.com

Got it? Use your imagination, just remember the first thing in your email address (before the + ) must be your real username – the part in blue below.

AbrahamTuwitze@gmail.com

See? So, Abraham can put anything after AbrahamTuwitze+ as long as the words are connected with dashes — or underscores ____ or periods.  For example, AbrahamTuwitze+I-Love-the-CIA@outlook.com is the same as AbrahamTuwitze@outlook.com.  Whatever you put after the + is up to you, but anyone can figure out your real email address because it’s what comes before the + (plus sign) that counts.  See?

AbrahamTuwitze+EB.Rides.A.Broom@gmail.com

AbrahamTuwitze+EB.Rides.A.Broom@outlook.com

And so that should give you all kinds of ideas.

Another good reason to use PLUS + addressing

Another good reason to use + (Plus) after your email user name, is to see where your spam is coming from.

Let’s say you want to sign up for Fred’s Great Onion Recipes email newsletter and your name is Lucy Jupiter. You can use the PLUS sign + to sign up to Fred’s mail list with your lucy-jupiter@gmail.com or outlook.com address using plus addressing this way:

lucy-jupiter+Freds-Mail-List@gmail.com

or

lucy-jupiter+Freds-Mail-List@outlookcom.

Now assuming you don’t use that PLUS address for anything else, if you start getting an avalanche of spam coming to your lucy-jupiter+Freds-Mail-List@gmail.com or outlook.com address, you can be pretty sure that old Fred is abusing your email address. 

A couple more things

Just in case you’re seething about my casual use of capital and lowercase letters, let me remind you that:

eMaiLaDdresseSaReNotCASeSenSitiVE@I-tells-ya.com

And finally… If your name is really Abraham Tuwitze, and you get a lot of junk mail because of this post, we’re sorry. If you send us a really large donation, we’ll take your name out of this post and use Beulah Pernadine Fatious, instead. And in the unlikely event that your name is Beulah Pernadine Fatious, and you make an extremely large donation, well take your name out of this post and use…