How to Say Email Addresses and Websites in English

Can You Say Email Addresses and Websites in English? Are You Sure?

You’re about to learn how to say email addresses and websites in English — the right way. While you’re here, also check out Different Ways to Ask and Tell the Time in English.

Saying email addresses and websites in English can be tricky — especially over the phone.

So let’s take a look at this simple but important use of English.

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Talking about email addresses

How to say email addresses

OK. Here’s my email address:

Email address example

So let’s look at the symbols.

Remember — don’t say “point” or “stop.”

It’s “dot.”

The funny @ symbol? That’s pleasingly called “at.”

At and dot: email address example

So how do we say it?

Usually we just say the full words:

How to say an email address
Send me an email and let me know what you’d like to read about next.

Because most people know the main Top Level Domains (you know, “com,” “net,” “org,” etc.), you can just read them out as words: “dot com,” “dot org,” etc.

But I’ve noticed that when it comes to most national TLDs (“.au,” “.bg,” “.tl,” etc.) it’s best to spell them out.

I guess that’s because it’s pretty difficult to say “bd” or “tp” as a word. Go on — try it!

How to ask for someone’s email address

An email address is personal information, so I’m always a little careful when I ask someone for it.

As a result, I tend to use softer (more polite) language.

“Could I get your email address?”
“Would you mind telling me your email address?”
“Could you tell me your email address?”

If you want to be super polite, just add a “please” to any of these.

Special tip: For some reason, it sounds kind of strange to say “please” at the beginning of the request. It sounds a bit desperate.

Put it at the end!

Talking about website addresses

How to say website addresses

Saying a website address is pretty similar to saying an email address.

We still say “dot” (not “point” or “stop”).

And we still say “dot com” or “dot org” or “dot whatever” (that one’s very popular).

But what about the bits in a website that you don’t see in an email address?

Here’s the full link to our blog page:

Website address example

OK. There’s a lot there. But the good news is that you can just ignore almost all of it.

The “https://” bit? Don’t bother.

The “www” bit? Don’t bother.

The “/” bit? That’s useful. This symbol is called a “forward slash.”

And you know the rest:

Don't bother saying https

So it’s “clark and miller dot com forward slash blog.”

But sometimes we might need to say “https://” and “www.”

So how do we do that?

Let’s start with the “https://”

There are two main parts of this: the letters and the symbols.

For the letters, just say them individually.

The “:” is a colon.

And we already know the “/.”

So we say:

How to say https://

And what about the “www”?

Interestingly, when we do say it, we actually say each letter individually — “double-u, double-u, double-u” — which takes ages. That’s nine syllables.

WWW actually stands for “world wide web.” That’s three syllables.

Humans can be pretty dumb sometimes.

Except for the smart New Zealanders. They just say “dub, dub, dub.” Nice, right?

How to say www in website addresses

How to ask for a website address

Technically, the website address is called a “URL” (short for Uniform Resource Locator. Yep, that’s news to me, too). So you could just ask “What’s the URL?”

But most people wouldn’t.

You’re more likely to hear:

“What’s the web address?”
“What’s the website address?”
“Can I get the website address?”

Or any combination of these.

Extra stuff about websites and emails

Of course not everyone’s email address and website address is as slick and beautiful as mine.

Symbols in email and website addresses

Some have all sorts of weird symbols.

So let’s take a look at some of the most common ones:

Symbols in email and website addresses (dash, underscore, colon, semi-colon, hashtag)

One word or two?

This is very common for passwords, but it’s also useful for websites and email addresses.

Let’s say your name is Isabel Reznor and your email address is isabelreznor@spiral.com.

Now, when you’re telling someone your email address, you want to make sure you’re reading it so that there’s no doubt.

You don’t want them to write isabel.reznor@spiral.com or isabel-reznor@spiral.com.

So here’s a neat trick. When you read out the first part of the email address, just clarify it with “all one word.”

“Isabelreznor — all one word — at spiral dot com.”

Simple, easy and efficient.

Big letters or small letters?

OK. This one isn’t particularly useful for email addresses, but is really useful for passwords (think about when you’re asking that busy waiter for the cafe’s Wi-Fi password).

Do you ever read an active Facebook thread about some sort of sensitive political issue?

Have you noticed that there’s always that guy WHO WRITES ALL HIS COMMENTS LIKE THIS AS IF HE’S SHOUTING AT EVERYONE BECAUSE HE BELIEVES THAT IF HE DOES HIS POINT WILL SOMEHOW BECOME MORE VALID? (And it usually is a guy.)

Well, let’s describe what he’s doing (apart from being a terrible internet user).

He’s writing everything in capitals or upper-case letters.

The opposite of upper-case is — surprisingly — lower-case.

Most emails are written in lower case, but if we want to check that we can ask:

“Lower case or upper case?”
“That’s all lower case, right?”
“Any capitals?”
“Any upper-case letters?”


OK. So now next time someone asks you for your email address, you’ll have no problem, right?

And hopefully you’ll confidently be able to read out, over the phone, the address of that excellent website about the Star Wars droids.

Have I missed anything?

I bet I’ve missed something.

If I have, let me know in the comments!

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21 thoughts on “How to Say Email Addresses and Websites in English

  1. I didn’t quite get how we read the ‘http’ part when there’s a need for that. As a single word? A bit tricky to pronounce. And spelling is out of the question, I guess.
    I’d appreciate your answer, thank you.

  2. Very helpful, thanks a lot.
    Gabriel does it make any difference saying “forward slash” or simply “slash”?

    Some interesting facts about pronounciation in russian-spoken countries.
    We call the sign @ as “doggie” 🙂 For example, your email would sound like “gabriel(doggie)clarkandmiller.com”
    WWW is widely avoided (because of its pronounciation, yepp), and if you mange to hear it in Ukraine it’ll have some similarity with New Zeland (look at the map — where these countries are 🙂 ) — “dubbie-dubbie-dubbie”. It sounds quite short and funny (you can hear it by clicking “Listen” button on “Russian side” here; but AI pronounces it quite slow — https://translate.google.com/#ru/en/%D0%B4%D0%B0%D0%B1%D0%B8-%D0%B4%D0%B0%D0%B1%D0%B8-%D0%B4%D0%B0%D0%B1%D0%B8).

    1. Hi Eugene.

      Thanks again for the positive feedback.

      In answer to your question: “not really.” “forward slash” and “slash” are usually interchangeable. Unless you’re in one of those situations when it matters which type of slash you use.

      I LOVE the idea of someone saying “Gabriel Doggie.”

      And the Ukrainian way is by far the coolest way of dealing with the WWW problem that I’ve heard so far.

      Great comment!

    1. Well, this all kind of depends on how much you think the person you’re talking to understands.

      One trick I find useful is reading the email at once first (“sales at taylormills dot co dot E S” or “s dot denham at D U R dot A C dot U K”) then clarify by spelling it out or, if you’re speaking to someone sharp, just by clarifying parts (“taylor with a ‘y'”).

      Hope that helps!

    1. Hi Alice,

      Interesting question.

      I had a look into this, but couldn’t find any evidence of using “double dot” instead of “colon.” The closest I got was some informal usage referring to the colon as a “dot dot.” But that was not very common at all.

      I’m curious, where did you hear this?

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