With Hillary Clinton being criticized over inaccessibility to her email, I’m left wondering if, under similar circumstances, my reputation would be in jeopardy. I depend on email for nearly all personal and professional communications.

The National Archives and presidential libraries contain hand-written letters of former government officials. The British Museum has hand-written manuscripts by famous authors who wrote a draft, then scratched out and added words to produce a masterpiece. Letters and manuscripts were painstakingly written in the cursive style formerly taught and admired, in many cases so pretty that it’s illegible today. With no access to whiteout or ink erasures, people gave thought to most every word they wrote.

The advent of email brought with it a carelessness. At first we were told it wasn’t necessary to worry about capitalization or grammar; just get that message out there. Email invites hurried responses, spur-of-the moment thoughts. Not infrequently do we post curt messages with the potential of hurting someone’s feelings; spout off words we’d never say face to face; write something mean-spirited, because that’s the way we feel at the moment. Sarcasm and irony don’t necessarily come through.

I’d be humiliated were all my emails scrutinized and exposed: a jealous comment to a friend about M’s appearance; a complaint that all R can do is brag about himself. A grammatical mistake here, a word of profanity there. I probably write more messages/letters in a week than my literary forebears wrote in a lifetime.

So I take issue with the assumption that all email messages sent by public officials are the property of the people. Though I disagree with John Boehner on most issues, I want to allow him some privacy when it comes to his email. Surely he has expressed frustration, anger, snide observations, private, spur-of-the-minute thoughts he doesn’t want on the public record. A word of affection to his wife back in Ohio is none of my business.

The Clinton’s no less than Obama have been targets of the opposition’s scrutiny ever since they appeared on the national scene. Surely Hillary was aware early on that she needed to keep tight control over what Republicans were certain to expose. This is not secretive; it’s savvy.

Sure, many of us older citizens wish for a return to civility and care in communications. It’s time we accept that it’s not going to happen.