In the Darwinian environment of business, one's most provocative words are naturally selected by competitors to be hurled back at them at the most inopportune moments. Do not arm your adversaries.

...with electronic communication, what one writes in a moment, eternity will not erase.

Emails, texts and social media promise the writer the power to be heard…In a society where relinquishing control is viewed as weakness, power is relinquished through every message sent without forethought to the potential consequences.

A car crash at seventy-five miles an hour results in glass and steel strewn about the roadway. Emergency workers attend to the injured drivers, passengers and bystanders, and remove the wreckage. An electronic communication wreck lacks the visual drama, but imparts damage just as real and just as permanent. A momentary lapse in judgment may prove catastrophic for the writer, their family, coworkers, and stakeholders.

The written word imparts a gravitas the spoken word lacks. The underlying assumption is that time and thought has been expended on what was written, even if that is not the case.

A damaging email forwarded outside the organization is indicative of problems within the organization.

An organization's proprietary, internal information is constrained only by an understanding that stake-holders will keep organizational matters within the organization.

EWI: Emailing While Intoxicated

If you don't know the answer to a question, don't guess, don't speculate, don't hypothesize, don't make a joke it by email, tweet, conference call, or at a press conference...Somehow, eventually, the electronic communication surrounding a situation will be made public and clarify and clarify what actually transpired.

For every opinion, there is an equal and opposite opinion.