The five words

The second part is the sentence. I've called it the five words, and the exact words matter less than the shape, but here they are. "I was wrong about that."

Why those. "I was wrong" says the thing. "About that" fences it, so it's about the roundabout and not about you. It's in the past tense, which puts the wrongness where it is, behind you. It has no "sorry" in it, because being wrong about a roundabout isn't a fault, and the earlier book You've apologised enough is about what happens when every correction comes wrapped in an apology. If there's real harm to apologise for, that's a different sentence and it comes after this one.

What comes next. Nothing. This is the hard part. Say the five words and stop, and let the silence sit there for a beat, and let the other person fill it. They will. "No worries." "I only remembered because of last week." "So the third, then." The beat is where the argument ends, and if you fill it yourself, you'll fill it with the salvage or the second argument or a joke, and the ending gets missed.

What not to add. "But." "To be fair." "In my defence." "Although." Each of these is a hinge, and everything on the far side of it undoes what was on the near side. If you catch yourself reaching for one, stop at the full stop instead. Whatever you were going to say after the hinge can be said in five minutes, as its own sentence, if it still seems worth saying, and it usually doesn't.

Where it comes from. Roy Lewicki and colleagues, in two studies published in 2016, looked at which parts of an apology make it work and found that acknowledging responsibility and offering to put things right mattered more than the others. The five words are the first of those, on its own, sized for a roundabout. There's nothing to put right after most turns except the route, and taking the third exit is the offer.

Practise it out of season. Say it about something that doesn't matter, when nobody's arguing. "I was wrong about the bins, it's Thursday." The words need to be in your mouth before you need them, because at the turn, with the heat in your face, you'll reach for whatever's nearest, and you want it to be these.