This paper regards Erving Goffman's claim that apologies should be proportional to the committed insults. It revises and judges earlier statistical research of apologies drafted to test Goffman's claim, finding the research to include notable errors. It reviews Goffman's claim by exploring adaptations in apologies that result from the recalibration of insults. It regards the social hardiness of Goffman's claim by refering to cases in which very similar insults are handled otherwise in transgressors' apologies. It collates 'positivistic' and 'constitutive' perspectives of apologies. Data stem from daily conversation amid American and British speakers of English.