How do I write an apology email in English?
Apologise in the first sentence and name the problem while you do it: "I apologise for the delay in sending the report." Then explain in one sentence what happened and take the fault: "This was an oversight on our side." Finally say what you are doing and by when — "I will send the corrected version by Friday" — and thank the reader: "Thank you for your patience."
- The three blocks: apologise and name it, explain briefly and own it, put it right and close.
- "Apologise for" plus a noun or an -ing form: "for the delay", "for sending the wrong file".
- "I apologise" or "I'm sorry" is how you apologise in English; "excuse me" is mainly for getting attention or interrupting.
B1 · Business Writing · 10 minThe English apology email, taught brick by brick.
A structured ten-slide lesson for B1 learners. Hear a complete apology in context, meet the three building blocks from a tutor — apologise and name it, explain briefly and own it, put it right and close warmly — then practise them in the interactive drills before a final quiz. The whole arc is under ten minutes and nothing requires a signup.
- CEFR levelB1 · Intermediate
- Time to completeAbout 10 minutes
- SkillsWriting, Vocabulary, Listening, Business English
- Bricks10 blocks
01 / 06
What an apology email has to do
An apology by email has a harder job than a spoken one. There is no voice, no face, and the text stays: your reader can read it three times, forward it, and pull it up again in a fortnight. That is why it pays to build this kind of email out of three blocks rather than improvising it. Block one apologises and names the matter straight away. Block two explains in one sentence what happened and takes the fault where the fault is yours. Block three says what you have already done, or what you will do and by when, and closes warmly. In that order, even three lines carry the whole load: "I apologise for the delay in sending the report. This was an oversight on our side. You will have it by Friday — thank you for your patience." Turn the order around and open with the explanation, and you sound like someone talking their way out of it before they have apologised at all.
02 / 06
Block 1: apologise and name the problem
The first sentence sets the tone. Business English gives you three openers, and they differ mainly in register. "I apologise for …" is the neutral standard and works towards customers, managers and external partners. "Please accept our apologies for …" is more formal and speaks for the company rather than for you personally; it suits cases such as invoice errors or late deliveries. "I'm sorry about …" is warmer and more personal, and fits colleagues or contacts you have been writing to for a while. All three are correct — what matters is that you do not switch register halfway through one email. Grammatically they share one pattern: after "apologise" comes "for", and after that a noun ("for the delay", "for the error on your invoice") or an -ing form ("for sending the wrong attachment", "for missing the deadline"). And name the matter right here: "I apologise for the delay" is polite, but "I apologise for the delay in sending the June invoice" shows the client that you know exactly what she is annoyed about.
03 / 06
Block 2: explain briefly, take responsibility
After the apology your reader wants to know what happened — but she does not want a report. One sentence is almost always enough. "This was due to a problem with our order system." "Unfortunately, the file was never attached." "Your message reached a mailbox that we no longer monitor." "Unfortunately" sits at the front of the sentence and flags the bad news without dressing it up. Then explicitly take responsibility if the mistake was yours or your team's. "This was an oversight on our side" is the most useful phrase here, because it places the mistake with the company without naming and shaming anyone. For something more personal, use "That was my mistake" or "I should have checked this before it went out". Keep this part short. The longer the explanation grows, the more it reads as a defence — and the more you invite your reader to weigh whether your reason was good enough. If several things went wrong at once, sum them up in one line instead of listing them one by one.
04 / 06
Block 3: put it right and close warmly
The third block is the one your reader remembers. It answers the only question that really occupies her: and now what? Say what you have already done, what you will do and, where it fits, how you will make up for it. For completed steps whose result matters now, the present perfect fits: "We have now issued the corrected invoice." "I have already asked the recipient to delete the email." With a finished past time, use the past simple: "We sent the corrected invoice yesterday." For a promise, you can use "will" with a specific deadline — a date, not "as soon as possible": "I will send the signed contract by Friday." The deadline takes "by" rather than "until", because this is a single action. And when the mistake cost the other side something, a remedy belongs here: "To make up for this, we have waived the shipping cost." Then close with one short, warm sentence: "Thank you for your patience." or "Thank you for letting us know." In more formal emails you can round the message off with "Once again, my apologies for the inconvenience." — though that formula only convinces when a concrete fix stands immediately before it.
05 / 06
The German traps: excuse, apologise to, inconveniences
Four places where German leads you astray. First, "excuse": "Entschuldigen Sie die Verspätung" quickly becomes "Excuse me for the delay" — but in English "excuse me" mainly gets someone's attention, interrupts them or apologises for a small slip in the moment. In a business email, the usual choice after a mistake is "I apologise for …" or "I'm sorry about …". "I excuse myself for the delay" does not help either: the sentence reads as if you were justifying your own lateness. Second, the infinitive: "Ich entschuldige mich, so spät zu schreiben" produces "I apologise to send this late". English puts the -ing form after a preposition — so "I apologise for sending this so late". Third, "inconvenience": in the fixed closing line the word stays singular — "my apologies for the inconvenience" — and in English you cause inconvenience rather than make it. Fourth, the word class: "apologise" is the verb, "apology" and "apologies" are nouns. So "I apologise", but "my apologies" and "Please accept my apology". And a small point of word choice: an email is usually followed by a reply rather than an answer — the usual phrase is "Sorry for the late reply".
06 / 06
Four workplace situations, ready to use
Four situations you will meet in office life, each with sentences you can lift directly. A late delivery: "I apologise for the delay in delivering your March order. This was due to a stock error in our warehouse. The parcel left us this morning and should reach you by Thursday." A wrong attachment: "I apologise for attaching the wrong file to my last email. The correct version is attached here, and I would be grateful if you could delete the earlier one." A missed deadline: "I apologise for missing the deadline on Friday — that was my mistake. You will have the finished chapter by Tuesday morning." An invoice error: "Please accept our apologies for the error on invoice 4471. We have now issued a corrected invoice, and the credit note will reach you this week." All four examples name the problem and provide a fix. Depending on the situation, you can fold explanation and responsibility into one sentence, and when the correction is already attached it needs no deadline. A good apology email needs no more than that. When in doubt, reread your draft and cut every sentence that only explains why none of it was your fault.