this post was submitted on 09 Oct 2023
221 points (97.4% liked)
Asklemmy
44151 readers
1164 users here now
A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions
If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!
- Open-ended question
- Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
- Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
- Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
- An actual topic of discussion
Looking for support?
Looking for a community?
- Lemmyverse: community search
- sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
- [email protected]: a community for finding communities
~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_[email protected]~
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
How are those insulting? Saying that I should have been more clear means I am the one who messed up by not communicating properly. Something like "sorry that you misunderstood" would be insulting since it places the blame on the recipient's intelligence.
They're not inherently insulting - there are ways to use those phrases appropriately, but they can be (and often are) used sarcastically, when the speaker had been clear in the first place.
I'm sorry for not being more clear about how the dishes should be done.
The main issue is that it partially reassigns blame onto the recipient of the apology. As if you're saying "I could have done better, but if you were someone else it might not have been an issue in the first place".
Keep in mind that most apologies are being given unto hurt people and hurt people are less likely to give you the benefit of the doubt. That's why rule #1 is to keep it simple and spare the details.
EDIT: A good example of this in context: "I'm sorry for this mixup. It should've been written better."
Making the object of the sentence explicit ("this mixup") removes the implied presence of the recipient ("I'm sorry for not being more clear (with you)").