Friday, April 11, 2008

You talking to me? I'm the only one here...

A few months ago an e-mail scam prompted our trusty IT guardians to send out a warning. The warning included a description of the e-mail, an explanation of the method and danger of the scam, and some words of advice.

Users who receive such a message should immediately delete the e-mail and do not reply.

I expected that first sentence to offer the usual ellipsis on a coordinated structure. Let's consider a simplified form of the sentence:

Users should delete the email and users should not reply.

And I wouldn't have noticed if should was repeated. If instead of ellipsis a pronoun was used the should would of course be necessary.

Users should delete the email and they should not reply.

But there's an ambiguity there because the reason for using the pronoun isn't clear so it might read as an assurance that if you delete the email you won't get a response.

But what did the writer of the warning give us? (again simplified)

Users should delete the e-mail and do not reply.

Where did that do come from? There's no dummy-DO necessary or possible in this form. Is it a typo?

It's possible that the sentence is grammatical. Tho that would be odd. It would require that two declarations be intended:

Users should delete the e-mail.
Users do not reply.

It would be odd to combine a suggestive-declarative and an informative-declarative.

So then is this a mistake? Well it's non-standard but I won't call it a mistake. Take a look at the rest of the warning.

If you have already responded to the email it is highly recommended that you immediately reset your password and run anti-virus and anti-malware scans of your system.

Users are no longer referred to in 3rd person. Now I the reader am the mentioned user. And I became that user a little earlier than I expected: in the middle of the first sentence. So the user in the first sentence is referred to in two persons and that first sentence is both a declarative and an imperative.

Users should delete the e-mail and you do not reply.

So is this allowed? Is it grammatical? Well it'd be OK over two sentences. But in one? Man...I don't know anymore. I just don't know.

6 comments:

  1. It seems like the first half of the sentence is declarative ("users should delete"), while the second half is imperative ("users, do not reply"). Where the writer is tripped up is the "should" in the first half, which might make it seem imperative (or possibly subjunctive, but that only makes the problem worse).

    I don't know if that alone is enough to make any sentence ungrammatical (mixing moods), but it rubs me the wrong way here.

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  2. mxrk writes: It seems like the first half of the sentence is declarative ("users should delete"), while the second half is imperative ("users, do not reply").

    That's preeeetty close to what I meant when I wrote: that first sentence is both a declarative and an imperative.

    All I can hope is that mxrk meant to further specify what I thought was obvious.

    He's scrupulous that way.

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  3. It's odd to mix modes that way. I'd have either gone with "... and not reply" or ". Do not reply."

    So it's stylistically infelicitous for sure. Ungrammatical? Hmmmm... I'm not sure, either.

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  4. Hey! Did Buffy tell you we have a student in common? And that she really likes your class - well she said that you're a great teacher and you make things easy to understand! Quite the compliment!!

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  5. I like the way I said it better.

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  6. I find a coordination of a declarative and an imperative OK, but it sounds better if there's something that makes it unambiguously an imperative; for example, Users should delete the email, and whatever you do, do not reply!

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