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**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [June 29, 2001, 2:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/html-weirdness/70550 "2001-06-29T02:31:12Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 5\
**Page:** 1
**Author:**  [@Cardinal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cardinal)\
**Post date:** [June 29, 2001, 2:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/html-weirdness/70550/1 "2001-06-29T02:31:12Z")
I’ve been modifying html pages for an email we want to send out, but my goooodness, that file’s big. I’ve added up the sizes of the pictures included, and their only about 20k. The file size when sent as an email is 47k.
Where did the rest of that come from, maybe?
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**Author:**  [@Reeder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Reeder)\
**Post date:** [June 29, 2001, 4:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/html-weirdness/70550/2 "2001-06-29T04:43:06Z")
You want to send a web page? Why not just link it? Html is a language the browser uses to display a web page. Most email programs don’t use a browser.
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**Author:**  [@CurtC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CurtC)\
**Post date:** [June 29, 2001, 4:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/html-weirdness/70550/3 "2001-06-29T04:56:37Z")
I tried to convince you last time you asked a question about this, _not_ to send out HTML e-mails. I got an e-mail tonight which shows up on my mail program (Forte Agent under Windows) as two lines of text, followed by three attachments: an HTML attachment, a JPEG, and a MIDI file, which total 70 Kbytes for a two-line note. When I get stuff like this, I get the impression that the person who sent it is an idiot.
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**Author:**  [@k.os](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/k.os)\
**Post date:** [June 29, 2001, 5:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/html-weirdness/70550/4 "2001-06-29T05:55:55Z")
I think the SMTP protocol is to blame there. Anything sent by Email gets inflated. This is a relic from when packets were dropped all over the place. The protocol has redundancy built in it so it could correct those dropped packets.
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**Author:**  [@Bob\_Scene](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bob_Scene)\
**Post date:** [June 29, 2001, 7:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/html-weirdness/70550/5 "2001-06-29T07:13:42Z")
When you e-mail pictures they get encoded as either a UUE file or a B64 file, either one of which is bigger than the original file. But not **that** much bigger. The encoding must account for some of your problem. The rest of your problem is sending out an e-mail like that. You should listen to the other people in this thread about that.