One of the things I hate the most in the daily official mails is the use of the word 'below'.
Some gems from the mails in my office inbox:
1. "Today work on yesterday's issues as mentioned in below mail..."
2. "In the below figure I mention the problem I am facing..."
3. "Below solution doesn't work..."
4. "Please accommodate the below list of people to the Tuesday training session..."
Spicing up all this is the fact that while writing such sentences these people think that they are writing perfectly correct and, to my horror, even elegant English.
What made me cry my throat out was the fact that those people did NOT change their usage when I patiently explained two of them for an exclusive 5 minutes that 'below' is an adverb or a preposition rather than an adjective. The legends apparently convinced themselves that so many people can not be wrong. Where do YOU come from loser !!! Who the hell are you to teach us how to write official mails when we have been in the industry for n times the number of years than you have been !
Some gems from the mails in my office inbox:
1. "Today work on yesterday's issues as mentioned in below mail..."
2. "In the below figure I mention the problem I am facing..."
3. "Below solution doesn't work..."
4. "Please accommodate the below list of people to the Tuesday training session..."
Spicing up all this is the fact that while writing such sentences these people think that they are writing perfectly correct and, to my horror, even elegant English.
What made me cry my throat out was the fact that those people did NOT change their usage when I patiently explained two of them for an exclusive 5 minutes that 'below' is an adverb or a preposition rather than an adjective. The legends apparently convinced themselves that so many people can not be wrong. Where do YOU come from loser !!! Who the hell are you to teach us how to write official mails when we have been in the industry for n times the number of years than you have been !
Very well; I accept my defeat pal.
So why the hell do I freak out. That’s simple. In my usage of the language I mostly rely on my instinct whether the sentence SOUNDS and LOOKS correct or wrong. After reading this usage of 'below' almost DAILY for the last 2 years I fear that one day, somehow, I would subconsciously start finding it correct.. :( !!
Another of my sorrows is the use of verbs 'do' and 'does' by those legends. So many times I have fought my instinct to pull my hair off my head when I read the mails using, not to mention with all the styles of font and colors, -es with do (=does) for the plural subject !
1. The two approaches does not work here.
2. Satya do not want you to work on this project.
Their logic is simple. Singular goes with singular. Plural goes with plural. What's wrong with YOU you know-it-all SOB !
And I am silent sitting in front of my computer in a 3X3 cubicle clutching my hair. Hats off to ya sunshine !
And the list doesn't end here though. Start counting them in your inbox and there are as many of them as are the integral Pythagorean triplets in mathematics. I would better leave them for my daily morning dose than live though all those here once more :( !!
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