How to Stop Typing Sorry in Emails so Often
Last week I sent an email saying “sorry about that!” was my automatic response – I forgot something, and the short message from this person made it clear that they were less than happy with me. But after a minute of thinking, I took off the “sorry” and told them that I would do what they asked for as soon as possible. I did, the task was done, and everything is in order. No harm, no foul.
After a few days, I still think about this letter and whether my answer was rude or not. To be clear, I was not going to be rude; When I took an extra minute to ponder my answer, I realized that I hadn’t done anything worthy of an apology. But as a woman (especially a young woman answering someone much older and theoretically more authoritative), you get used to playing certain roles.
And the automatic apologizer is one of the most common and one of the most difficult to break. Women are taught to be passive and make everyone feel comfortable. By default, we apologize, even if there really is nothing to apologize for. And I say this as a person who has repeatedly apologized to inanimate objects.
As Leah Fessler writes for Quartz :
Countless studies have shown that women apologize far more often than men, largely because men are accustomed to thinking they have less to apologize for.
This habit easily spills over to online, where “ feminine language” manifests itself in the constant use of exclamation marks , encouraging emoticons and typed “sorry !!!” by women . These hedges, as gender linguist Susan Herring calls them, are the emotional labor of digital communication .
This is something that I became more aware of in the past year and took steps to change. Alicia really likes to play the role of the meek saint. This does not mean that I never apologize again – some actions certainly justify it. But if you’re not fast enough to respond to someone’s email, or don’t complete a task differently than someone else suggested, that doesn’t mean you’ll rise to that level.
The key to saying “sorry” less is, of course, knowing that you are doing it. Helps to pause before rushing to answer. This is one of the reasons why spending more time responding to messages has become one of the healthiest habits I’ve developed over the past year or so. I write an answer, relax, or switch tabs for a while and then come back to it.
Another trick I like: replace “sorry” with “thank you,” as Quartz suggests. Instead of writing “sorry!” for example, you could write, “Thank you for pointing this out.” Gmail also has a plugin that can point out times when you self-suck with phrases such as “I’m sorry,” “I’m just,” and the annoyingly passive “I’m not an expert, but”.
If you don’t like these suggestions … thanks for pointing this out. There. It was easy.