Apology and Reconciliation Letters Editing and Proofreading Services

A letter arrives after two years of silence. It says that the writer is sorry the other person felt hurt, that things were difficult for everyone at the time, that they hope the past can be left in the past, and that they would very much like to hear back. Every sentence in it is doing something other than apologising, and the person reading it can feel that even if they could not say why. It will not be answered.

We edit what people write when they are trying to repair something — apologies to family members and old friends, letters after an estrangement, notes accompanying an attempt to make amends, messages written before a funeral or a wedding where both parties will be present, letters to an adult child, apologies for something that happened decades ago, and the reply somebody drafts and then does not send. Our editors work on letters that are difficult to write and worse to receive badly.

The apology sentence itself is what the whole letter stands or falls on, and its failure is a subject shifted away from the person who did the thing. There is no apology in "I'm sorry you felt hurt". We work through these so the act is named in plain words with the writer as the subject of the verb, since a reader can survive "I told your husband about your drinking" and cannot do anything with "mistakes were made"; so the explanation is removed or moved to the very end, because a reason placed next to an apology reads as a defence and the reader stops at it; so the effect on them is stated in your own words, given that a person who has been told what they went through knows whether you understood it; so the letter asks for nothing — no reply, no meeting, no forgiveness — as any request converts the apology into a transaction and puts them in the wrong for refusing; so the door is left open in one sentence with the initiative left entirely with them; so the words "if" and "but" are hunted out and removed, since almost every failed apology contains one; and so anything intended to make the writer feel better about themselves is cut. Letters written this way sometimes work, and always land honestly.

Everything you send is treated in confidence, including family circumstances, drafts and anything described in them. We are editors rather than therapists, mediators or counsellors, and we offer no view on your situation, the other person, or whether to send anything at all. What we can do is make sure the letter says what you mean it to say.