Friday 5 December 2008

English Training Course - Asking feedback on a report


To: Emily@xyz.com
Subject: Please review this document
Dear Emily,
I should be glad if you review the attached document. Please can you let me know if you have any inputs, comments and concerns?
I look forward to hearing from you.
If I don't receive your feedback by 5:00pm next Wednesday, I will deem that you are OK with the content of the attached document.
Thank you very much for your attention!
Regards,
Stone

Stone wants the language to sound friendly but he also wants to keep the language direct and professional.
Let’s first look at the issue of mechanics –the grammar, punctuation, spelling and layout of the email.
I think the formatting of this email needs a couple of changes. In the first paragraph, we have a phrase – I look forward to hearing from you, which normally appears in the conclusion of a business letter.
We also need to make few corrections to the grammars of the first paragraph:
-We add ‘could’ before ‘review’ to make an indirect request.
-Since this is a request, so let’s say ‘Can you please’ instead of ‘Please can you’.
-‘inputs, comments and concerns’ basically mean the same thing.
In the third paragraph, I don’t think Stone need to use the exclamatory point. That’s very informal.

Now let’s go back the top and look at the style of the email beginning with the subject lines. ‘Please review this document’, we don’t know what kind of document he is referring to. Is it report?Unfortunately, we can not fix that because the information is missing from the email. Let’s move on to the first paragraph, where we will see the same problem. Stone doesn’t tell us what kind of document he is talking about.
I think we should make some changes in the second paragraph to make it more formal.
-A word like OK is very informal, let’s change it to ‘satisfied’.
-Instead of saying ‘that you are OK with the content of the attached document’, just saying ‘that you are satisfied with the document’. Stone has explained that the document is attached to the email.
-Stone has made a request in the body of the email. We don’t need to repeat this request in the subject lines. To make it less direct and more polite, we can change the subject line to ‘Document for review’.

I think the tone of first paragraph doesn’t have any major problems.
However, if we look at the second paragraph, there certainly some changes we should make.
‘If I don't receive your feedback by 5:00pm next Wednesday’, by using a negative verb here, Stone created a negative feel for the entire sentence. Instead of talking about what Emily shouldn’t do, let’s talk about how she can help Stone to improve the document-‘I would like to receive your feedback by 5:00pm next Wednesday’.


Let’s look at the update email:
To: Emily@xyz.com
Subject: Document for review
Dear Emily,
I should be glad if you could review the attached document. Can you please let me know if you have any comments?
I would like to receive your feedback by 5:00pm next Wednesday, so that I can make any changes you feel are necessary.
Thank you very much for your attention. I look forward to hearing from you.
Regard,
Stone

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