My mother used to say that I should write a book of excuses. Actually, I don't think that there is any real difference between an explanation and an excuse except context. An explanation is an excuse when you are relating the reasons why something happened, usually something over which you had control, thought you had control over or should have had control over.
Fictional excuses are just lies.
Having said that, I guess I should give context.
If you are late for work once or twice over an extended period because of unanticipated events (like abnormally heavy traffic or an accident), it's an explanation situation. You have allowed for all reasonable events, but you can't control externalities.
If you are continually late for work your explanations for the individual incidents degenerate into the realm of excuses no matter how good the reason for each discrete event. The various explanations may, of themselves, be perfectly true, but the reason they have become excuses is because you are not reacting to the root cause - you have control, but you are not exerting it. The real reason you are being continually late is because you are not leaving early enough. The fact that the traffic was slow, the bus was earlier than normal on any given day or whatever is the proximate but not the ultimate cause!
Boy, that was long-winded. HTH, Rous.
