Whether you’ve genuinely made a mistake that you need to remedy or you’re simply trying to gloss over a disagreement in the workplace that you’d rather not become bigger than need be, sometimes saying ...

When you’re running a few minutes late for dinner with friends, are the first words you say to the table, “I’m so sorry, I should have left earlier,” even though no one is upset? Do you feel the need ...

The basketball hadn’t even bounced from the rim but, like a reflex, I yelled out “sorry” to my teammates. I could feel it in the flick of my wrist that my three-point attempt was off as soon as I ...

Someone’s talking to you. You don’t know what to say, but you feel like you need to say something so there isn’t that painful, awkward, uncomfortable silence. You need to do something, and you need to ...

Amy Ebesu Hubbard, PhD, is a Professor and Chair of the Department of Communicology at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa. The main areas of her teaching and research focus on conflict management, ...

I have a fraught relationship with the words “I’m sorry.” I say it constantly, habitually, even when I don’t mean to. I was raised in the South, where women are often conditioned to apologize ...