Wow, great replies and thanks for the debate. Looks like most of you are probably better with this than I am.

Peter, didn't know that. Where is this in Outlook?

William, it's entirely possible that this was a language issue, but he's a CEO. He wrote it in English and French, and should have had someone run through it and try to clean things up. It's out there forever now and you can bet that MS will keep copies around.

As much as I like to see CEOs blogging, like Mr Schwartz from Sun, someone has to go over their writing and ensure it's appropriate for release. They have too much impact in what they're doing.

I'm like Grant, or have been in the past. I can be a jerk, so I try to slow down on the inflammatory emails. I actually have quite a few things I won't write down in email, blog, anywhere, specifically because I know it's out there. I've had emails forwarded on and it's sad because it means that I can't trust people.

I'd add one thing that in addition to being careful about sending what you write, be careful about what you forward. Your name is attached to the email as well and you might be breaking trust or furthering a cause. I often delete email addresses before I forward something since I don't think I should be giving out someone's email if it's not appropriate.