PH Grammar police - please help!

[JCB123]

Our Admin team have decided to set up standard letters for our ISO. Not only are the standard letters awefully written and punctuated, they don't even read correctly.

Please help settle an argument surrounding the final sentence on our fee letter for me. Our standard fee letter is one of these examples below; please could the font of knowledge confirm which they think is correct.

1.
Further to our meeting...
We take our tasks as follows...
Our fees will be...
We trust the above is satisfactory...
Assuring you of our best attention.

2.
Further to our meeting...
We take our tasks as follows...
Our fees will be...
We trust the above is satisfactory...
Assuring you of our best intentions.

[ProfessorPeach]

2

[Turbodiesel1690]

2.

[mmertens]

2. And, it's "awfully".
HTH

[Doofus]

WTF does "We take our tasks will be" mean?

"We take our tasks to be" or "we take it that our tasks will be", surely?

[Strangely Brown]

JCB123 said:

Our Admin team have decided to set up standard letters for our ISO. Not only are the standard letters awefully written and punctuated, they don't even read correctly.

I think that should be either awesomely or, more likely, awfully.

JCB123 said:

Please help settle an argument surrounding the final sentence on our fee letter for me. Our standard fee letter is one of these examples below; please could the font of knowledge confirm which they think is correct.

1.
Further to our meeting...
We take our tasks as follows...
Our fees will be...
We trust the above is satisfactory...
Assuring you of our best attention.

2.
Further to our meeting...
We take our tasks as follows...
Our fees will be...
We trust the above is satisfactory...
Assuring you of our best intentions.

Oh dear. Number two makes you sound like you have a bad reputation and you're trying to say, "not really, honest Guv". I don't like the first one much either but it is definitely the better of the two.

I would also change:

We take our tasks as follows -> We understand our tasks to be as follows
We trust the above is satisfactory -> We trust that the above is satisfactory

Just my £0.02.

Edited by Strangely Brown on Wednesday 28th April 10:45

[JCB123]

mmertens said:

2. And, it's "awfully".
HTH

OK, I get 9/10 then.


And ignore the intial parts of the letter; they're just 'par exemple'.

Well, I think that's settled it then. I'll print this page out and get them to change it.

Thanks all!

Edited by JCB123 on Wednesday 28th April 10:48

[ProfessorPeach]

"Assuring you of our best intentions" is rather old-fashioned, isn't it.

And meaningless.

If you left it out, would your clients assume that you were out to destroy them?

Why not ditch that phrase altogether?

Or say "We are not out to destroy you"?

Or "Whilst we are not out to destroy you personally, we are out to destroy others, and you may be destroyed in the melee. Sorry about that."?

[JCB123]

ProfessorPeach said:

"Assuring you of our best intentions" is rather old-fashioned, isn't it.

And meaningless.

If you left it out, would your clients assume that you were out to destroy them?

Why not ditch that phrase altogether?

Or say "We are not out to destroy you"?

Or "Whilst we are not out to destroy you personally, we are out to destroy others, and you may be destroyed in the melee. Sorry about that."?

Don't get me started, all of the standard letters are really bad. I was always told that you should shy away from these Olde World phrases, they're just meaningless.

Our small company of only 10 people is run by a Director and Office Manager, who think they are some big multi-national. We're not. We are small, and local, and people want to feel that we are approachable, but the way we organise our business is too straight, cold and just old fashioned.

[ProfessorPeach]

JCB123 said:

Don't get me started, all of the standard letters are really bad. I was always told that you should shy away from these Olde World phrases, they're just meaningless.

Our small company of only 10 people is run by a Director and Office Manager, who think they are some big multi-national. We're not. We are small, and local, and people want to feel that we are approachable, but the way we organise our business is too straight, cold and just old fashioned.

Feeling your pain, bruv.

[DrTre]

1....probably...and ought to say "closest attention" or something....although it's still not right...it's a bit obsequious....

Like Sb says "Best intentions" is a bit "We'll try our best but, to be honest, the results are usually a bit st"

[JCB123]

DrTre said:

1....probably...and ought to say "closest attention" or something....although it's still not right...it's a bit obsequious....

Like Sb says "Best intentions" is a bit "We'll try our best but, to be honest, the results are usually a bit st"

I think they're trying to say 'we assure you that we have priced in accordance with your requirements only' as in, we haven't added a massive factor of safety.

[Neil H]

"We take our tasks as follows...
Assuring you of our best intentions.
As you can see from the above, we're a bunch of fkwits."

[JCB123]

Neil H said:

"We take our tasks as follows...
Assuring you of our best intentions.
As you can see from the above, our admin team are a bunch of fkwits."

EFA

We know what we are doing. We know what the jobs entails and what we are charging; but they insist of writing all of our letters in these stupid 'standard' formats.

[DrTre]

The first reads like "when we undertke the work you'll be well looked after", which is fair enough.

I see what you're saying on the second...but...it's just not quite "there"...it reads a little like tapping your nose and saying "we've priced it correctly, know what I mean?" although that's probably just cynicism on my part.

[TonyHetherington]

I imagine 2 is what they're trying to say.

However, if it's the attention of the company that they wish to give to the recipient of the letter, rather than good intentions, then it's written very wrongly.

So number 2.

However, as you very well know, the letter:

a) sucks
b) sux

[bonsai]

Would I be correct in assuming that the idiots who wrote those letters are also heavy abusers of the reflexive pronoun?

[Neil H]

JCB123 said:

Neil H said:

"We take our tasks as follows...
Assuring you of our best intentions.
As you can see from the above, our admin team are a bunch of fkwits."

EFA

We know what we are doing. We know what the jobs entails and what we are charging; but they insist of writing all of our letters in these stupid 'standard' formats.

As far as the receiver of the letter is concerned, there's no difference.

What's wrong with plain English?

"We undertake the following tasks"

[TonyHetherington]

bonsai said:

Would I be correct in assuming that the idiots who wrote those letters are also heavy abusers of the reflexive pronoun?

Myself believes yourself would be correct.

[Neil H]

TonyHetherington said:

bonsai said:

Would I be correct in assuming that the idiots who wrote those letters are also heavy abusers of the reflexive pronoun?

Myself believes yourself would be correct.

Agree with you, myself does.