I consider myself something of an expert on
apologies. A quiet temper has 1 me with
plenty of opportunities to make them. In one of my earliest
2 , my mother is telling me, "Don’t watch the 3 when you say ’I’m sorry’. Hold your head up and
look the person in the 4 , so he’ll
know you 5 it." My
mother thus made the key point of a (n) 6 apology: it must be direct. You must never 7
to be doing something else. You do not
8 a pile of letters while apologizing to a person 9 in position after blaming him or her for a
mistake that turned out to be your 10 You do not apologize to a hostess, whose guest of honor you treat 11 , by sending flowers the next day without
mentioning your bad 12 .
One of the important things we should do for an
13 apology is a readiness to 14
the responsibility for our careless mistakes. We are used to
making excuses, which leaves no 15 for
other person to 16 us. Since most
people are open-hearted, the no-excuse apology is better. Leave both parties
feeling 17 about themselves. That,
after all, is the 18 for every apology.
It 19 little whether the apologizer is
wholly or only partly at fault: answering for one’s 20
encourages others to take their share of the blame.