I really hate when e-mail is sent where a reply is clearly required, but then they tack on “Please advise.” I’m so sick of that phrase, and I can’t exactly put my finger on why. I’m seeing it quite often in e-mails at work, and maybe its the industry I work for, but I see it at least once a day. Well, just as often I see “Please advice” and I get a slight laugh out of that.
In any case, I think I’m finding the phrase rude, but I’m not sure if that’s why it fully bugs me.
Arghhhh!
“perfect storm” and “literally” here.
As in “It was literally a perfect storm.”
I think you are bugged by the lack of sentence structure. Maybe you could advise similarly.
“Please advise.”
“Need more foo.”
“Please advise.”
“Literally? Perfect storm!!”
-d
The paradigm shift to “please advise” is a result of the value-added insight provided by the marketing managers trying to increase their positive cash flow and reduce their negative bottom lines by using fewer resource-hours of all the times they needed to communicate to their human-resource engineers “Please tell me what to do because I’m only a marketing idiot and I have no real insight.” Seeing this perfect storm arising, they literally all gathered in a town-hall discussion (and a webinar for those in Papua New Guinea) to muster up a new phrase. After that, they each had their action items and take-aways to complete by the next meeting.
They each conceptualised, integrated, performed cognitive recognisance, conducted surveys, modularised the perspectives, alternated currents, and objectified women.
In the end, it all came down to what a marketer wrote to an engineer on this request.
“Please acquire diagnostic variances including symbolic enhancements.”
And now you have, the rest of the story.
(This story brought to you by someone very bored on a Sunday.)
when meetings begin with ‘please advise’ you know you’re doomed.
it aggravates me because the phrase is simply redundant. what else would i do when someone asks me a question?
it might have a purpose if it said "please advise x of y, or x when y" but even then, "please let x know …" works equally well. though it does sound less, well … precious 😐