Thursday, September 27, 2007

". . . would do the same me."?

After being interrogated by an insurance auditor yesterday and breaking a picture this morning on accident, I received a plea from an amazon.com seller attempting to get excellent feedback from me. The seller wrote, “Thank you for shopping at seller’sname@gmail.com. I left a excellent feedback for you would do the same me. ” I have some feedback, “Uh . . . what?” (I’ll write a blog about you if you can tell what commercial that line in quotes comes from). I am protecting the seller’s name for his or her own privacy. Below is my reply:

Well, the book did have a lot more markings in it than the description led me to believe, but I just might give you some feedback because of your plea. However, there are more pressing issues. For instance, your message was really confusing. You wrote, “Thank you for shopping at seller’sname@gmail.com. I left a excellent feedback for you would do the same me.” The second phrase does not even make sense. Your first one is okay, but the second is awful. In primary school I learned that the articles “a” and “an” are used at different times depending on the first sound on the following syllable. Please consult a primary school grammar book for further instruction. The funny thing is, you do not even need an article in there at all, but I see how it could be confusing, so I will keep it in there! What I am trying to say is that your sentence should read, “I left an excellent feedback for you . . .” I am not going to get technical about the second part of the sentence because I don’t want it to get confusing. It read, “. . . would do the same me.” It literally hurt to type it like that. Is that even English? First of all, it is a run-on sentence, but some simple punctuation would help. Second, I can’t even tell if it is a question or a command. The command would read, “You would do the same for me.” The question would read, “Would you do the same for me?” I would prefer the question because it feels less manipulative and needy, although it still has a strong sense of neediness. I do not want to pick on your tactics for trying to get excellent feedback, but I do want to help you with the wording of your plea. If you are going to ask for excellent feedback, please cut and paste the following: “Thank you for shopping at seller’sname@gmail.com. I left an excellent feedback for you. Would you please do the same for me?” Or, if you want to keep the second sentence together, you could write, “Thank you for shopping at seller’sname@gmail.com. I left an excellent feedback for you, would you please do the same for me?” I will guarantee that you will get better feedback if you will use correct grammar. At the very least, you will avoid people like me.

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