How many times have you written an email, hit “send,” and immediately wished you had an “unsend” button?

Maybe you saw a typo in the split second that the email system was processing. Maybe you wrote the missive in a fit of anger, and belatedly realized that it needed a re-write or several in order to be considered anywhere near diplomatic. Or maybe, in that moment the email was still on your screen, before it flew out into the ether, you saw that you had addressed it to the person you were writing about instead of the person you were writing to.

A May post on the New York Times’s Freakonomics blog made me laugh and cringe at the same time. Or, rather, the comments did. I could totally relate. I’ve inadvertently hit “reply all” instead of just “reply” (who put those two buttons so close together?). I’ve had horrible typos that I didn’t see until it was too late (most memorably, an unfortunate misspelling that made the word “count” into something much more offensive). And there has been a time or two when I was so caught up in what I was planning to write that I addressed my email to the subject of my rant, instead of my confidant. (I’ve been on the receiving end of that kind of email as well. It isn’t pretty. And it can ruin a professional or personal relationship.)

Many years ago, after being told to forward certain news stories to a certain editor, I received two emails one after the other. The first was polite: “Thanks for the stories!” The second was much less so: “Will she f*@cking stop sending us stuff already?”

Apparently, the person hit “reply” instead of “forward” on that second one. She apologized immediately, but I’ve never forgotten it, and our work relationship was strained after that.

I was thinking about that incident yesterday, when I wanted to fire off an angry email to someone. I really, really wanted to write a rant that would burn the eyeballs. I was full of anger, irritation, and indignation, itching to type it out of my system and into someone else’s.

Instead, I waited. I took deep breaths (didn’t help). I gave myself a time out (didn’t help). I poured myself a tiny drink (helped a little). (Yeah, it was early in the day, but college rules applied: It was past noon, I was in my own home, and I’m over 21.)

What stopped me from writing it? These three things:

1.) An email is not a secure document. How would I feel if one of my kids read that email? What if it was forwarded to someone else? Would not be good. You should never send anything in an email that you wouldn’t be comfortable putting on a post card.

2.) Hitting “send” is akin to hitting “publish” — and anything published on the internet is public record, even a supposedly “confidential” email. (Need more of a deterrent? Check out Worst Email Ever, and be glad that something you wrote isn’t up there.)

3.) I still don’t have an “unsend” button, so once it’s out there, it’s out there. Did I really want it to be out there?

I didn’t.

But what if you still want to send that angry email? If it’s a reply, erase everything in the “to,” “cc,” and bcc” fields before you type the first letter — that way, it won’t go anywhere, even if you automatically hit the “send” button. Type whatever you want, as angrily as you want, and then hit “save as draft” instead. And then walk away for a while.

Yes, it can wait; if it were truly urgent, you would have picked up the phone instead of logging in to your email.

Hours later, from home if possible, re-read your draft. Chances are, it’ll require major revisions and probably still won’t be worth sending.

But, if it is, at least you can catch those typos.

OK, friends, confess: What’s the worst email faux pas you’ve ever made?