{"id":14525,"date":"2017-11-01T14:03:51","date_gmt":"2017-11-01T18:03:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.digitalrhetoriccollaborative.org\/?p=14525"},"modified":"2023-11-16T14:08:55","modified_gmt":"2023-11-16T19:08:55","slug":"just-not-sorry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.digitalrhetoriccollaborative.org\/2017\/11\/01\/just-not-sorry\/","title":{"rendered":"Just Not Sorry"},"content":{"rendered":"

Title<\/strong>: Just Not Sorry
\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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Just Not Sorry | Reiss, medium.com<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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

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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

How It Works<\/b><\/h4>\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