In a recent issue of Time Magazine (3/18/2009), columnist Nancy Gibbs wrote a comprehensive piece entitled”The Lost Art of Saying I’m Sorry”.
The only comment I would add to Gibbs’ insightful piece is this: Having more apologies would be BETTER and having apologies that touch people who are listening for different parts of an apology would be BEST. According to research that Gary Chapman and I conducted for our book, The Five Languages of Apology, people look for 5 different things in apologies and no single phrase really touched more than 28% of the people in our sample.