Stop Apologising (for the things you’ve never done)

October 22, 2009 · by Joanna Paterson · in

One of the defining features of confident writing is that it’s not apologetic.

Yes, I know it’s good to signal that you’re human, that you’re not perfect, that you have doubts and concerns and things you’re insecure about just like the next person. That’s part of being engaging, warm, human. It’s part of making connections, and writing with rapport.

But we can take that too far, to a point where the writing starts to become apologetic. I seem to have been doing battle with this over the last few weeks, and I’ve been jotting down some thoughts on its various guises:

8 Tell-Tale Signs that You’re Being Over Apologetic:

1. Your writing is littered with verbs in the passive voice (and I don’t just mean a few, I mean littered)

2. There’s an explicit apology in the text (when there isn’t anything to apologise for)

3. You spend as many words justifying what you’re saying as saying it

4. There are too many words: too much wrapping, too many abstract words, too much clutter, all getting in the way of the bit that really matters (the point)

5. You explain what you’re going to do long before you actually do it

6. Your sentences have come out back to front, with the important stuff (the agent, the verb) languishing away at the end

7. You dole out the apologies elsewhere, in the preamble to a post or on Twitter, managing expectations down

8. There’s a missing punch: you’ve backed away before you got to the killer blow, the repetition for effect, the slowing down to an unavoidably measured, significant pace, the delivery of the emotional truth. The ker-pow that you recognise when you read it (and when you write it)

I’m going to explore some ways to shift from apologetic to confident writing in the next couple of posts: one on ways to manage and shift your state before you write (and as you write), the other on changing some of the language patterns you might have got over familiar with.

It’s worth making the effort.  If you can cut out the apologies you’ll find:

  • Your writing is easier to read
  • You avoid long and complex sentences (and the grammar gremlins that go with them)
  • You convey confidence in your subject
  • Your writing makes you start to feel more confident
  • You stop diminishing what it is that you really want to say

~~~

For any Jam fans out there, yes, the title is from A Town Called Malice, one of my favourite teenage songs.  Once I got the idea to write something on apologising I just couldn’t get the song out of my head again.

Here it is: