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Many or most knowledge workers in the early 80's had personal typewriters, but secretaries did a lot of typing, especially for final versions. Editing was sometimes done with "correction tape" (or paper) in the typewriters, but there was a lot of literal cutting and pasting (and Xeroxing) for more extensive rewriting. That is, people would retype entire paragraphs and the new paragraph was taped on top of the old, and then photocopied.The notes left on people's desks for missed phone calls were taken from ubiquitous pads. (This one is relatively modern, since it mentions "cell.")

Secretary Clinton used a single Blackberry for both professional and personal emails, a fairly common practice by professionals who are always on-call. Since the DoS wouldn’t give her a secure Blackberry like they did with the President (nobody seems to know why), she used her own device, which necessitated using her own server, based in her Secret-Service protected residence. Near the end of her tenure, the server was transferred to a commercial provider PRN.After the Secretary left office, the DoS contacted her and asked for copies of her work-related emails. The Secretary instructed her lawyer to scan through all 60,000 emails and turn over work related emails to the DoS. Over the course of about a month, Ms. Samuelson reviewed the headers, searched keywords, noted from and to addresses to eventually produce about 30,000 emails. The FBI did not find any undue influence by the Secretary on this process. (After acquiring the bulk of the Secretary’s emails, the FBI needed 40 people and several months to review them completely.)Department of State policy was for employees to decide which emails are to be deleted and saved. Secretary Powell, for example, deleted all of his emails – none were turned over to the DoS, despite their request for them. So, in fact, she was not in violation of DoS rules.Some time later, about two years after she left office, the Benghazi Investigation sent a subpoena for the whole of her emails. At that time, one of the IT guys at PRN, belatedly and mistakenly deleted some of her previous emails. The FBI conducted an exhaustive investigation, and even gave him immunity, but they determined that he did this by mistake and there was no instructions by the Clinton office to do this – indeed, they had specifically told him not to.At various times, there were archives and back-ups of emails, but redundant copies were deleted, and nobody ever bothered to track them. The DoS archive seems to be just about as bad, with gaps and omissions.The FBI eventually managed to recover over 80% of the emails (Due to the way that the FBI counts emails, this mean that they were able to read all of the emails.)So let’s look at the claims.Secretary Clinton did not use the DoS secure server to send and receive government emails.Although eventually there were rules put in place to prevent this, at the time she set up her server, there were no rules against it.No other Secretary of State did this.In fact, Colin Powell used his AOL server for much the same thing. And, when Secretary Clinton asked him, he advised her to not use the DoS server.Powell used AOL, which meant that hundreds or thousands of AOL employees potentially had access, as well as third parties (recall that Sarah Palin’s Yahoo account was rather easily hacked by an amateur and Mike Pence’s AOL account was hacked as late as 2016).Clinton used a private server inside her Secret-Service protected residence. No evidence has been found that suggests it was compromised. (On the other hand, the DoS system was hacked.)Ms. Clinton did not fully comply with the DoS request to turn over her emails.Again, the DoS rules specifically state that the email owner has sole responsibility to determine what is state business and what is personal business.Clinton did turn over her entire email trove to her lawyers with instructions for them to release any work related emails to the DoS. Working under a rather severe deadline, the lawyer did not read every email, but rather searched for any with a DoS send or receive address, and for selected people as well as a variety of keywords such as Benghazi. These are the same techniques that the FBI used in its search of Hima Abedin’s emails later.There was an archive of all the emails, but nobody thought it was worth keeping track of.The emails were deleted after a subpoena was issued for them.The FBI aggressively pursued this, giving multiple people immunities, but eventually concluded that the IT guy had just screwed up.The FBI said that some of the emails contained confidential information.Much of this was denied by State: many of the FBI’s “confidential” information was readily available in the public sphere or had no basis for being marked as confidential.The FBI showed Clinton several of the confidential emails. For none of them did the Secretary agree that the information was confidential.The FBI asserted that Blumenthal had sent Clinton confidential information. However, Blumenthal was not a government employee: all of his information was garnered through his connections and open sources.None of the emails were properly marked as confidential. Three of them had markings that indicated confidentiality, but that same marking is also used as a paragraph marker in legal documents.None of the claimed confidential information was sent by Clinton.DoS employees rarely send confidential information by email. Instead they use secure fax or telephone or use couriers.The FBI didn’t indict Clinton for political reasons.The FBI concluded that there was no reasonable way that Clinton’s actions were prosecutable. This was the unanimous opinion of over a dozen top FBI prosecutors and lawyers. It was also the majority opinion of outside lawyers.That is about it. Like every other accusation against Clinton, there is basically nothing there. Certainly nothing as serious as W. Bush’s refusal to release his emails, or even as serious as the confidential information that was mishandled by the republicans investigating Secretary Clinton.

Email communication in the workplace is essential, whether you are sending messages to clients and vendors or to colleagues. The right tone and approach to your words can have a great impact on your working relationships and your ability to get work done. The following are just some helpful tips you can use to improve your email communication skills.Take Care with Punctuation and CapitalizationThe way people communicate with text messages and messenger apps differs greatly from the way a professional email should read. Excessive punctuation marks and wording in all caps can strike an aggressive and argumentative tone in a workplace email. All caps can be appropriate in subheadings or outlines highlighting important points, but they may not effectively communicate your ideas when used in a full sentence. Exclamation points can be great for sharing good news, but they can be off-putting when requesting action from colleagues or subordinates.Create Searchable Subject LinesThe subject line you create for each email should provide a preview of the information contained in the message. Making the subject line as informative as possible makes it easier for you and your recipients to pull up old emails as needed to reference the messages. Generic subject lines such as "this week's update" or "meeting follow-up" don't provide a lot of information, but simply adding the date for each topic can go a long way toward making content easy to find later on.Avoid Walls of TextWalls of text can be daunting, and they can make absorbing the information you provide more difficult. When sending longer messages, break up your thoughts into separate paragraphs. If you are creating a list of objectives or goals, consider using bullet points instead of paragraphs. You can highlight key pieces of information using bold font or adding an underline to the text. Even when sending shorter emails, these best practices can give your emails more authority and a more professional tone.Add a Professional SignatureA professional signature block at the end of your emails provides recipients with ways to contact you with further questions. The signature should include your full name, position with the company and office address. List your phone and fax numbers as well as all email addresses you use for business. Remember that adding this block of information doesn't absolve you of the need to end your emails professionally. You'll still want to add a thank-you of some sort to give your messages the right finishing touch.Proofread Your MessagesTypos and syntax errors can take away from your overall message, so it's important to proofread your work. You can use a browser extension designed to perform spelling and grammar checks to assist you, but be sure to use your own eyes to give any messages you send a final look. Take extra time to make sure company names and the names of any people referenced in your emails are spelled correctly to ensure your correspondence remains professional and respectful.By keeping your messages to the point and following a few best practices, you can help ensure your thoughts and ideas are easy to share with your clients, customers, colleagues and managers. Avoid writing emails in a rush and take care to choose the right words to convey your content in a clear, meaningful way.Want to learn more about freelance writing? Follow Prose for Paychecks.