Timeline for how to politely and natively reply an email and ask question
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
13 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jul 3, 2018 at 15:32 | comment | added | Ash | @aesking Pass, I only speak the language I'm out of my depth when I get too far into syntactic analysis. | |
| Jul 3, 2018 at 15:27 | comment | added | aesking | @Ash another thing is, I don't know in "Can I please confirm with you" if you is the subject or object // English doesn't really distinguish between the cases; but syntactically, it's in the object position // So it may be object omission or something along those lines! I'm from Northern England and you can't help it if it's part of your dialect :P | |
| Jul 3, 2018 at 15:23 | comment | added | Ash | @aesking I'd consider it formal enough to put in an official written request as well as using it in verbal conversation, I'm a kiwi though, we can have extremely low standards for formality sometimes. | |
| Jul 3, 2018 at 15:15 | comment | added | aesking | @Ash Yes, personally when I upvoted your answer I didn't see anything wrong with it because I'm also susceptible to the same dialect where the syntax "Can I confirm" or "can I..." etc. is acceptable. I wouldn't say it is grammatically incorrect; but rather informal. The phenomenon is referred to as conversational deletion or subject omission. | |
| Jul 3, 2018 at 15:06 | comment | added | Ash | @aesking I think this is one of those case of slight dialectic differences in acceptable syntax where I'm from "can I confirm...", or "can I get..." in the first instance, is an accepted form for asking a person for information but it may not be strictly speaking grammatically correct. | |
| Jul 3, 2018 at 9:42 | vote | accept | Alex | ||
| Jul 3, 2018 at 9:41 | vote | accept | Alex | ||
| Jul 3, 2018 at 9:42 | |||||
| Jul 2, 2018 at 21:39 | review | Suggested edits | |||
| Jul 2, 2018 at 23:35 | |||||
| Jul 2, 2018 at 21:32 | comment | added | aesking | @ScottM Oh, I see! Well what I meant was “Can/could I please confirm with you that...” would work as equally well as “Can/could you please confirm that...”. The former is tautological but may be more polite. I got confused over the can vs could thing because you showed preference for could in your comment. | |
| Jul 2, 2018 at 21:12 | comment | added | ScottM | @aesking, I don't understand your comment. I am not advocating the use of "can"; I am suggesting that the subject of the sentence should be you, not I. | |
| Jul 2, 2018 at 19:53 | comment | added | ScottM | I would replace "Can I" with "Could you" or something along those lines (or just leave it off entirely). Technically, I can't "confirm" anything because I don't have the answer. | |
| Jul 2, 2018 at 18:41 | history | edited | Ash | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
added 83 characters in body
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| Jul 2, 2018 at 17:38 | history | answered | Ash | CC BY-SA 4.0 |