How to Apologize Someone: When you apologize to someone, it can be difficult to find the right words that will make the other person feel that you are really apologizing. But there are some linguistic tricks that you can use to convey your exact message effectively. Recent research shows that the length of the words we choose affects how sincere the apology is. 

You feel better after apologizing - Research

Research shows that forgiveness is often described as a 'lightweight thing'. Anyone says 'sorry', regardless of how they really feel. But forgiveness works. Research shows that if someone apologizes, people feel better and are more likely to cooperate with the person who apologizes.

One way to make an apology more persuasive is to make it costly. When apologists are willing to bear the cost in the form of spending money, effort, or time, their apologies are better accepted.

People are happy when money is spent on forgiveness

A 2009 study found that people are more likely to be convinced by apologies that cost the apologist money than by apologies that can be given at no cost. However, there are other ways to put effort into apologizing. The length and commonness of a word affect how difficult it is to say or write. Longer words require more clarity. Uncommon words are harder to remember and speak or write. So, if someone wants to put more effort into their apology and express their regret, they can use longer and less common words.

Also, uncommon words are harder to understand, which means they are cumbersome for the speaker as well as for the person speaking them. But long words that are not uncommon are usually not hard to understand.

The person apologizing chooses long words

They are more specific than other words, which means they may be easier to understand. Then, a smart person apologizing may choose long words that are not rare. That makes it harder for him to apologize, but not for the person being apologized to.

I conducted two studies to investigate the role of word length and word similarity in apologies. One analyzed apologies in the real world, and one tested people's perceptions of apologies with words of varying length and similarity.

What did this research reveal?

In the first study, I used apology messages posted on X (formerly Twitter) by 25 celebrities and 25 ordinary people. These messages were compared to other tweets from the same users. My results showed that apology messages from X contained longer words than non-apology messages.

In other research I examined whether people perceive apologies with longer or less common words as more sincere. Participants were given three apology sentences that had the same meaning but differed in word length or word similarity.

Example one:

My work does not reflect who I am (brief, general)

My work does not reflect the real me (short, less general)

My actions do not reflect my true character (longer, less common)

give examples:

I did not mean to reply in a hostile manner (short, general)

I didn't mean to reply in an aggressive style (short, less general)

I didn't mean to reply in a confrontational way (longer, less common)

Participants were presented with three sentences at random and ranked them from most to least apologetic. Results showed that participants classified sentences with longer words as more apologetic than sentences with shorter words. In contrast, the common nature of the word did not affect how apologetic the sentences seemed.

People use long words when apologizing

The combined results of both studies are similar: People tend to use longer words when apologizing and perceive longer apologies as more apologetic. But apologies that use unusual words do not have the same effect. In other words, people express their regret with apologies that are difficult for them to say or write but not difficult for the person to whom they are saying them to understand.

My research shows how we convey messages not only through the meaning of the words we use but also through the form of the words. The research also shows how the form of a word (in this case, its length) can convey meaning depending on the context. That is, the word 'character' does not normally have an apologetic meaning, but in the context of an apology, its length signifies effort and can be interpreted as expressing greater remorse.