You write an email asking for a deadline extension. It’s a reasonable request. You’ve delivered everything on time for six months. You read it back before sending and count: two “justs,” one “sorry to bother you,” one “does that make sense?” and a closing line that asks if this is “okay with you.” None of it was conscious. All of it was reflexive. And all of it quietly undermined the request before the recipient even got to the ask.

Linguist Robin Lakoff first documented women’s tendency toward hedged, softened language in 1975 — identifying patterns like uncertainty markers, tag questions, and excessive politeness as features of how women communicate in a culture where directness in women is penalized. Fifty years later, the patterns are still there, still largely unconscious, and still doing measurable damage to how professional women are perceived.

This is not about politeness. It’s about the specific words that signal — to the reader, to the room, to your own nervous system — that you don’t fully stand behind what you just said.

The Words That Do the Damage

“Sorry, but…” / “Sorry to bother you…”
Opens by assigning blame to yourself for having a need. It signals that the request is an imposition before anyone else has registered it as one. If you’re not actually sorry — if you have a legitimate ask — the apology front-loads unnecessary doubt about whether you’re entitled to make it.

“Just wondering if…” / “Just checking in…” / “Just wanted to follow up…”
The word “just” is doing heavy lifting here — it’s a minimizer, designed to make the ask smaller and therefore safer. But it also makes you smaller. “I just wanted to follow up” signals that the follow-up is a minor, almost apologetic gesture. “I’m following up on X” is a professional communication. One of them gets taken seriously.

“I think” / “I feel like” (when stating facts or decisions)
There’s a place for “I think” — when you’re genuinely uncertain. But “I think the deadline should be Friday” when you’re the one setting the deadline is a hedge that doesn’t belong. It invites revision of a decision that wasn’t up for revision. “The deadline is Friday” is a fact. Softening it into an opinion opens the floor to argument.

“Does that make sense?” / “Let me know if that’s unclear”
Usually appended to something perfectly coherent. What it actually signals: “I’m not confident this was worth saying.” It outsources the validation of your own communication to the reader — putting them in the position of judging your clarity instead of receiving your content. If something genuinely requires clarification, ask for it specifically. Otherwise, cut it.

“This might be a silly question, but…” / “This is probably obvious, but…”
Pre-emptive self-deprecation. The question wasn’t silly. Announcing that it might be guarantees the question is heard through that frame. The person who asks “what’s the timeline on this project?” is perceived differently than the one who asks “this might be obvious, but what’s the timeline on this project?” The content is identical. The credibility delivered with it isn’t.

Why This Isn’t About Politeness

Genuine courtesy adds warmth to professional communication. These phrases add doubt. The distinction: courtesy says “I respect your time” — “I’m sorry to bother you” says “I’m not sure this is worth your time, but here I am anyway.” One is a social grace. The other is an advance apology for your own existence in the conversation.

A useful litmus test comes from Textio’s research on gendered language in the workplace: would the male counterpart in the same role use this phrasing in the same context? Not as a standard to aspire to — men over-hedge too — but as a diagnostic. The phrase “just wanted to check in” in an email from a male peer reads differently than from a female peer, not because the words are different but because the pattern is more expected from women and therefore registers more strongly as a credibility signal.

The Before/After Audit

Five real-feeling workplace situations, rewritten:

Asking for a deadline extension:
❌ “Hi — I’m so sorry to ask, but I just wanted to check if there’s any flexibility on the Friday deadline? Totally understand if not, just wanted to flag it.”
✅ “I wanted to flag a timing issue on the Friday deadline — I have a conflict with [X] that will affect delivery. Can we move it to Monday, or is Friday firm?”

Pushing back on a request:
❌ “I think this might be a bit outside my bandwidth right now, but I don’t want to be unhelpful — let me know if you really need this.”
✅ “I’m at capacity this week with [X]. I can get to this by [date], or if it’s urgent, let’s talk about what comes off my plate.”

Presenting an idea in a meeting:
❌ “I don’t know if this is a good idea, but I was just thinking — and maybe this doesn’t make sense — what if we tried [X]? Does that make sense?”
✅ “I want to propose trying [X]. My reasoning: [one sentence]. Happy to discuss.”

Following up on an unanswered email:
❌ “Hi, so sorry to follow up again — just wanted to check if you had a chance to look at my last email? No worries if not!”
✅ “Following up on my email from [date] re: [topic]. I need your input by [date] to move forward — let me know if you need anything from me.”

Correcting a mistake in a meeting:
❌ “Sorry, I might be wrong about this — I think there might be a slight issue with that number? Maybe I’m misreading it.”
✅ “That number looks off — the figure I have is [X]. Can we verify before we move forward?”

What Happens When You Drop Them

The fear is real and worth addressing: won’t this make me seem cold, aggressive, robotic? The research says no — with one important condition: the tone stays warm and the words stay clean. A direct, warm email reads as confident and clear. A direct, terse email reads as cold. The hedges were never creating the warmth. The warmth lives in word choice, acknowledgment of context, and genuine consideration — not in the apologies and minimizers.

What people register when the hedges are gone: competence. Textio’s analysis of workplace communication and performance feedback found consistent patterns linking hedged language to lower perceived authority, independent of the content being communicated. Directness is not coldness. It’s confidence, which reads as competence.

The One-Week Audit Challenge

For one week: before sending any email or Slack message, do a five-second scan for the words above. Don’t delete all of them automatically — occasionally a “just” or a “sorry” is genuinely appropriate. But make it a deliberate choice, not a reflex. For each one you find, ask: “Is this adding anything, or is it apologizing for the sentence I’m about to say?” Most of the time the answer is the latter.

By day four or five, you’ll start catching them as you type rather than on review. That’s the shift — from auditing to noticing in real time. The reflex doesn’t disappear immediately, but it stops running on autopilot.

Your words are either working for you or against you. Most of the time, these ones aren’t working for you.

This article is for informational and professional development purposes only.