But there will continue to be plenty of electronic messages getting their writers into hot water – discussions about race taken out of context, emailing insider share tips to your dad, being recent examples.

However, it’s not just the inexperienced that get caught out.

The Lehman Brothers bankruptcy examiner, Anton R. Valukas, used a number of terms to search for problematic emails when faced with 34 million pages of documents from the bank. Here are some of the less technical ones he came up with (NPR):

* stupid
* huge mistake
* big mistake
* dumb
* can’t believe
* cannot believe
* serious trouble
* big trouble
* unsalvageable
* shocked
* speechless
* too late
* uncomfortable
* not comfortable
* I don’t think we should
* very sensitive
* highly sensitive
* very confidential
* highly confidential
* do not share this
* don’t share this
* between you and me
* just between us

According to Bloomberg, the search terms came out of a session where 20 lawyers at Valukas’s firm, Chicago-based Jenner & Block LLP, were “told to sit down and be as imaginative as you can”. The terms were changed if searches produced too many hits.

So there you have it, a handy self-edit list of phrases to avoid.