I'm sorry but...

[sfa]

Emailing my boss this morning:

"I'm sorry, but I can't find the request you sent for information for your supervisor's mid-year evaluation. Could you resend that request so I know what to give you?"

Seriously, what's wrong with that? "I'm sorry, but..." is a perfectly good phrase if you use it when you really ARE sorry about what you're about to say, although it seems to be correctly applied only when the phrase to follow is news to the other person. That is, you wouldn't use it to apologize for something that happened in the past that the listener already knows about, but rather as a way of breaking unwelcome news in a way that possibly softens the blow: "I'm sorry, but my cat scratched your daughter" is pretty much the same as "My cat scratched your daughter. I'm sorry." So I'm not sure why one would be preferable to the other, or why the first would irritate someone.

However, it seems that it is often used when the person receiving the apology and the news to follow might share in some of the blame for the news, so I can see that it would be overused, or used to ONLY assign blame to that person (i.e., an insincere apology). "I'm sorry, but my cat scratched your daughter. Maybe you should talk to your daughter about poking animals with sticks?" That is, I AM sorry that my cat scratched your daughter, but you should also be sorry that your daughter was teasing the cat to begin with. I'd also use it when I bear NO responsibility for the "bad news" but I'm sorry that the situation exists at all. For example, saying to my daughter when I have to wake her up on a day she's looking forward to spending in the pool: "I'm sorry, but it's pouring rain."

In my case, I'm pretty sure my boss never sent me the request, so her reminder message to me wasn't so much a reminder as a new request and she wants the answer today; however, I'm willing to admit the possibility that she sent the request and I accidentally deleted it (for which I'm truly sorry).

In Malkin's examples, "I'm sorry that I dented your fender" is a phrase I'd use after the fender's owner already knew about the accident and the dented fender. Same thing with "I'm sorry I dented your fender," while "I'm sorry, but I dented your fender" is what I'd say to the fender's owner when I had to go to his door and let him know that I just backed into his car when I was pulling out of my driveway.

Sarah