\nAuthors<\/strong>: Tami Reiss, Steve Brudz, Manish Kakwani, and Eric Tillberg of Def Method
\nPublication date<\/strong>: Dec 2015
\nExperience here\/Website<\/strong>: https:\/\/chrome.google.com\/webstore\/detail\/just-not-sorry-the-gmail\/fmegmibednnlgojepmidhlhpjbppmlci?hl=en-US<\/a><\/p>\n
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<\/a>I often do not write my emails alone. Daily, my colleagues and I draft emails together around a conference table. Often, we ask, \u201cCan I read this to you all? How do I respond to this? What goes in this subject line?\u201d And in the most difficult instances, we write the email together.<\/p>\n
Moments like these seem to have only increased in my graduate studies. While this means emailing takes longer, it sometimes feels necessary to have the confidence to send them.<\/p>\n
In a tweet that went viral, Gabby Noone commented on the particularly gendered nature of this experience:<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.digitalrhetoriccollaborative.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/11\/CqUyK0bW8AA_llc-e1509559136514.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
Just Not Sorry<\/a> is a Google Chrome extension that aims to address these gendered writing challenges in emails. Using a red squiggle line as for misspelled words, Just Not Sorry alerts authors to places in their emails where they hedge, qualify, or soften their ideas, directions, or expertise.<\/p>\n In this Webtext of the Month, we review this example of a digital writing space that has been modified for the needs of particular writers and with the goal of inclusion.<\/p>\n Just Not Sorry was created in 2015 by Tami Reiss at Def Method (previously, Cyrus Innovation). At an event with other entrepreneurial women, Reiss was discussing clips from comedian Amy Schumer<\/a> and reflecting on how often they all found themselves relying on gendered phrases and language, especially apologizing. She wondered why a group of business and team leaders weren\u2019t writing with the confidence of people in those positions.<\/p>\n Out of these conversations, Reiss and her team created Just Not Sorry to alert writers to words or phrases that qualify or hedge. As of November 2017, these \u201cwarning phrases\u201d include<\/a>:<\/p>\n Reiss explains<\/a> they chose to use the red squiggle because we are already \u201ctrained to see that as an error.\u201d However, after realizing there\u2019s nothing wrong with the spelling, Reiss hopes that writers \u201crealize it\u2019s because the word is hurting [their]message.\u201d<\/p>\n The code is open source so anyone can modify it. Additionally, anyone can submit requests for new \u201cwarning phrases\u201d to be included, as long as they provide \u201ca link to an article that explains why the phrase could negatively affect someone\u2019s message.\u201d<\/p>\n Just Not Sorry Reflections Lauren: After installing the app, I did not find it underlining much in my emails, though I see myself using similar language to those listed as warning phrases, but just not those exact phrases. What I am left wondering with this app is how directness and leadership are connected to having confidence in one\u2019s position. The core question seems to be how do women exhibit confidence, particularly in male-dominated fields and contexts? But here I am wanting to qualify all this by saying, \u201cWhat do I know? I have never run a business; I\u2019m just a graduate student.\u201d<\/p>\n We hope this Webtext of the Month is an interesting companion to the DRC\u2019s upcoming reviews from Feminisms and Rhetorics <\/a>and blog carnival on openings for feminist action<\/a>. In seeing this especially in conversation with the blog carnival, Material and Digital Rhetorics: Openings for Feminist Action, this Webtext raises possibilities for how feminist action can be taken through extensions, modifications, or hacks of digital spaces. However, we also wonder how cyberfeminist scholarship can help us understand the potential blurriness in this project between promoting inclusivity and disciplining women\u2019s writing.<\/p>\n We are looking forward to ongoing discussions in the upcoming blog carnival on feminist digital challenges such as this!<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Title: Just Not Sorry Authors: Tami Reiss, Steve Brudz, Manish Kakwani, and Eric Tillberg of Def Method Publication date: Dec 2015 Experience here\/Website: https:\/\/chrome.google.com\/webstore\/detail\/just-not-sorry-the-gmail\/fmegmibednnlgojepmidhlhpjbppmlci?hl=en-US I often do not write my emails alone. Daily, my colleagues and I draft emails together around a conference table. Often, we ask, \u201cCan I read this to you all? How<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":153,"featured_media":14527,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"ppma_author":[1307,1337],"class_list":{"0":"post-14525","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-webtext-of-the-month"},"authors":[{"term_id":1307,"user_id":153,"is_guest":0,"slug":"bdeaster","display_name":"Brandee Easter","avatar_url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/8c442509950241ec04cd7abe48e0bd63?s=96&d=identicon&r=g","user_url":"","last_name":"Easter","first_name":"Brandee","job_title":"","description":"Brandee Easter is a doctoral student in the Composition and Rhetoric program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her research focuses on intersections of gender and digital rhetoric."},{"term_id":1337,"user_id":186,"is_guest":0,"slug":"lgarskie","display_name":"Lauren Garskie","avatar_url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/b838e82c78aab76e93f69b816cb77d6e?s=96&d=identicon&r=g","user_url":"","last_name":"Garskie","first_name":"Lauren","job_title":"","description":"Lauren Garskie is a PhD student in the Rhetoric & Writing Program at Bowling Green State University. Her interests include design, literacies, digital rhetoric, and multimodality."}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.digitalrhetoriccollaborative.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14525","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.digitalrhetoriccollaborative.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.digitalrhetoriccollaborative.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.digitalrhetoriccollaborative.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/153"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.digitalrhetoriccollaborative.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14525"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.digitalrhetoriccollaborative.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14525\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20995,"href":"https:\/\/www.digitalrhetoriccollaborative.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14525\/revisions\/20995"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.digitalrhetoriccollaborative.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14527"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.digitalrhetoriccollaborative.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14525"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.digitalrhetoriccollaborative.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14525"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.digitalrhetoriccollaborative.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14525"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.digitalrhetoriccollaborative.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=14525"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}How It Works<\/b><\/h4>\n
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\n<\/b>
\n<\/span>Brandee: I installed this soon after its release, and I was surprised to see how much of my emails came up red. I know I use \u201cjust\u201d a lot, especially to preemptively apologize for my email (\u201cI\u2019m just writing to see\u2026\u201d), but those red squiggles showed up in phrases I hadn\u2019t thought about. The one I edited out most quickly was \u201cI think\u201d because it made me realize I used it at the beginning of my ideas to soften them. Overall, I\u2019ve found that it\u2019s a useful tool, but I don\u2019t always follow it as an absolute right or wrong. Sometimes, I want to say \u201cjust\u201d or \u201csorry!\u201d<\/p>\n