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Any error in the following statement?

Scenario :

Earlier, I have informed the other person that the event is not yet approved but later on I realized that I am wrong and I need to convey it. So I used the following statement. But I had a question about whether "is" or "was" should be used and whether "already" should be placed before "approved "

I am sorry it is approved already!

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  • @RegDwight I have made the changes and I hope this time it will be very specific
    – Gopi
    Commented Nov 3, 2010 at 12:30
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    Thank you very much. Your question is much clearer and easier to answer now. (As you can see for yourself from the answers so far, when we had to guess what you had in mind, we guessed only half of it right; it didn't occur to us that one of the reasons you were asking the question was the verb tense.)
    – RegDwigнt
    Commented Nov 3, 2010 at 12:38
  • @RegDwight I really love the way you replied. Made me to think that your a great human :)
    – Gopi
    Commented Nov 3, 2010 at 12:48

4 Answers 4

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I don't think any of the other answers quite conveys the point that what you're sorry for is that you gave incorrect information.

I'm sorry, I was wrong: it has actually been approved already.

or slightly less explicitly

I'm sorry, it has actually been approved already.

I think both the "already" and the "actually" are needed to make it clear that you're not sorry about the approval.

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I believe the correct grammar would be "already approved".

However, the punctuation depends on what you're sorry for. The current punctuation implies you're sorry the "it" was approved this early, as if you've missed the opportunity before it was approved.

If the sentence was directed towards someone opposing the approval, and the speaker was implying "There's nothing that can be done, it's already approved", the correct punctuation would be "I'm sorry, it is already approved".

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  • @RegDwight Ugh, I can't believe I confused your/you're, I'm usually very careful about mixing those up :)
    – JohnoBoy
    Commented Nov 8, 2010 at 12:31
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I think you need "I'm sorry, but it has already been approved."

"I'm sorry, but it has been approved already." is also valid, but you still need the phrase "has been approved" instead of "is approved".

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I would agree with RegDwight for the most part. However, I don't think there is anything wrong with using "approved already".

You could say "I'm sorry, but it's been approved already!", if you are implying that there is nothing that can be done now.

If on the other hand, you're sorry about the approval itself, you'd say "I'm sorry, it's approved!" I think "already" is implied and redundant.

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  • I refuse to take credit for JohnoBoy's efforts. I have only slightly reformatted his answer. (^_^)
    – RegDwigнt
    Commented Nov 3, 2010 at 12:46
  • "it's" in this example is a concatenation of "it has" instead of the more ususal "it is"
    – seanyboy
    Commented Nov 3, 2010 at 12:57

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