Since there's been quite a bit of news lately about blogs and their potential backlash, it seems a good time to note that e-mail can come back to haunt you, too. Few of us would be willing to give up the convenience of e-mail at this point (spam frustrations notwithstanding!), but it bears remembering that this handy-dandy electronic communications tool creates a permanent record of your words-no matter how flip and off the cuff those words may be.

Here are a few points to ponder before letting your fingertips loose on the keyboard again:

• Murphy's law definitely applies here-and it only takes one nasty e-mail that gets out of the office and into the wrong hands to create a PR nightmare.
• Rarely should you use your "Send to All" button. Not only does that increase the odds of an e-mail ending up in the wrong person's mailbox, a lot of time gets wasted when people are copied on information they don't actually need. (And we won't even talk about dumb jokes and chain letters, because you never use "Send to All" for those, right?)
• Deleting an e-mail from your mailbox doesn't mean it's really gone. It may take some effort to find, but there's probably a record retained somewhere-in a hard drive, on a server, someone else's hard drive, etc. You need to consider every e-mail permanent and searchable; think Magic Marker message scrawled across the front of your house, for all the world to see!
• Make sure your staff understands that there is no such thing as private e-mail when it's written on a company computer. More than one person has been fired for trashing superiors and coworkers online.
• E-mail communication is frequently subject to misunderstanding because there is no body language to help with the translation. A comment that might be funny in person can come across as crass in an e-mail. Watch your tone.
• Because e-mail is quick and easy, the tendency is to treat it flippantly. Don't. You never know who's going to end up reading your remarks; they may not mistake your disregard of proper spelling and punctuation for ignorance instead of cuteness.
• Don't divulge any information in an e-mail that you would not want read in a court of law-or in front of your boss, best client, mother, or significant other!
• 60% of e-mail users admit to having sent messages with adult content at work. That's an issue on any number of levels!
• Remember the old admonition about writing letters when you're angry, but waiting to reread them the next day before sending? Same thing applies to e-mail. Get it off your chest if you must, but click "Save draft" instead of "Send." The embarrassment you save may be your own!
• Just because e-mail is an option for communication doesn't mean it's the best one to use. A phone call, letter, or face-to-face meeting is probably the better choice for confidential, complicated, or sensitive matters, or for matters requiring a lot of dialogue or questions and answers.
• Never, never, never make derogatory comments about a client-or anyone, for that matter-- in an e-mail. It may get lost in the thread and forgotten or overlooked, then inadverdently end up on that same client's desk. Remember, you have no control over where an e-mail goes once it leaves your computer.