Wednesday, August 22, 2007

I request you kindly to look into …

An officer enters the Director’s room.
Before the officer could wish the director,
The Director: How do you do
The officer: I am fine, thank you sir.
Dir: Have you finished the weighment?
Off: Yes sir. Sir, I request you kindly to look into my leave application.
Dir: Sure, in a day or two.

This is a brief but funny dialogue.
We can spot three most common and ubiquitous errors in this dialogue.
1. When someone look at us and say “hello, how do you do”, the spontaneous answer is “I am fine, how about you?” as done by the officer to the Director.
This is really a pity.
How do you do” is not a sentence equivalent to “How are you?”
This is only a greeting just like “good morning”.
So, when somebody says “how do you do” we must reciprocate by saying “how do you donot I am fine”.
2.Have you finished the weighment?
What is this weighment? You don’t see this word anywhere but still people use it.
Have you finished taking weight?” would be a better usage.
3.I request you kindly to look into
What a big difference a misplaced to can make. The officer needs to understand who he expects to be kind.
If the Director needs to be kind he should say/write, “I request you to kindly” Otherwise, the officer will become kind to the Director.
God’s grace, the dialogue ended quickly.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Genial dispatch and this post helped me alot in my college assignement. Thanks you on your information.