Is this too pedantic?

[abcdeeebygum]

An employee in my small friendly team always writes "hope your well?" at the start of all her professional emails to clients and freelance staff. She's a gem and absolutely first class employee who I greatly value, and we get on well on a friendly level. Shall I just ignore it? I can't think of a way to raise it without coming across as a pedant- probably because I am one!

When you email her about something else, just add at the end...
One more thing, sorry if I come across pedantic but I noticed you have been putting "hope your well" instead of "hope you're well"or "hope you are well" at the start of your emails. Thought I should let you know before a pedantic client beats me to it!

Ask her to change it to the correct form (“please could you use you’re or you are in your opening sentence).

I would not try and be funny OR apologetic about it. It’s incorrect and she should change it. She’s a grown up and she can/should deal with feedback.
Making light of it or apologizing is actually contrary to being professional in my opinion.

@BaronessBomburst

I would pretend that I'd only just noticed, and say "Hey Jill, autocorrect has mangled your letter! It's 'you're' not 'your'." That way she gets to save face. That said I recently received an email, which flashed up as a banner on my phone, with the opening sentence "I trust you and your loved ones are well." I nearly deleted it as spam before realising it was indeed an important email from a professional company. Maybe templates are the way to go.

This!

But I don't get the you and your loved ones bit!

People complaining about the question mark are being pedantic. It is a question. I don't think the you're vs your is pedantic as the mean different things. But I do wonder what is going on for people who are really bothered about split infinitives, who vs whom etc. It's just a bit sad. I would genuinely like to know why you are so bothered is it a rule thing or is that you want yo feel superior?

People complaining about the question mark are being pedantic. It is a question

No it isn't, it's a statement. "I hope you are well." A question would be "are you well".

I have actually mentioned to a colleague that the question mark was wrong in this exact sentence.

I'd kindly correct her - she represents your company!

Just send a one line email back being calm and matter of fact about it.

If you tuck it in to the end of an email about something else there is a strong chance she will either miss it or not absorb it because she is focused on the actual subject of the email.

It does not have to be a big deal unless you make it one.

I have a colleague who always writes your bit you're and defiantly instead of definitely and also the hideous "could of" and "should of". But she got promoted and I didn't so I'm not sure being ok at grammar is much use these days.

My current pet hate is the viral spread of "myself" where it should be me.

E.g Please send this to Nacreous and myself. No, please send this to ME!

Even people at director level in my organisation do it and it sends me bonkers!

Will you speak to this person over the phone or video chat at any point? Feels like it would be easier to deal with there as you have tone which is so important in these things.

@Nacreous

My current pet hate is the viral spread of "myself" where it should be me.

E.g Please send this to Nacreous and myself. No, please send this to ME!

Even people at director level in my organisation do it and it sends me bonkers!

Will you speak to this person over the phone or video chat at any point? Feels like it would be easier to deal with there as you have tone which is so important in these things.

Doctors are doing it too now.

One of my colleagues sends out documents with "should of", "could of", etc. I was asked by them to check over a specification a while ago and pointed these out. Well, you'd have thought I'd eaten their last Rolo! Total overreaction.

I just said it was up to them if they sent it out, it was their name on it not mine. It did go out and the client did comment that it was of poor quality.

Could it be raised as a general point to everyone in a meeting? Please do not use contractions in emails to clients going forwards.

Even if you correct her she might not remember because she obviously doesn't know the difference.

My DM says 'brought' when she means 'bought', I've corrected her but she always says brought again because I think she genuinely doesn't know it's wrong.

I'm the same with "Due to" you don't start a sentence that due to. It happens all the time

@RAOK

Could it be raised as a general point to everyone in a meeting? Please do not use contractions in emails to clients going forwards.

She's not likely to know what a contraction is, if she's making such basic errors! And technically, she's not using a contraction

Why is it better to try and impose a very formal style on everyone's emails, rather than correct one person about a clear-cut small error? This is guaranteed to cause much muttering among the troops.

Yes, covid has made informal contact difficult. I would email her with no apology and no mention of being a pedant. Someone upthread suggested
Please could you use you’re or you are in your opening sentence
And this looks good to me. Sign off how you usually do.

I would definitely (defiantly 😉) correct her. Such a basic error in a professional email would not inspire me with confidence.

This is obviously not true for grocer’s, whose misuse of apostrophe’s is the stuff of legend’s. 😉

I'm still trying to spot the split infinitive.

@RAOK. Is it ok to use them to clients going backwards?

Raise it as a typo as PP suggested. I can’t understand anyone thinking this sort of error doesn’t matter.

I think you should raise it. Especially in business and specially in an opening sentence.

Just say:

I'm sorry to be pedantic, but you do know it's you're and not your in this instance?
you're = you are
your = possession of something, your dog, your car etc.
You're so good at your job in every way but I just feel this will make a poor impression with some of our clients.

Then breezily change the subject.

It's such a fundamental and basic error and totally makes me look in a different way at people who do it. I have a primary school teacher friend who does it all the time which I think is appalling! It's so bloody obvious which is right when you think about what you're writing for even a moment or two.

Is it just me then, that would never miss those words again in an email - "I hope you're well?" Does anyone really care if an email has that meaningless phrase in it or not? (as you would not expect someone in a professional capacity to give a genuine answer to that question ... would you?)

If I were in your position I would approach it like this:-
Hi x
Have noticed since we're all working from home and communicating by email more that little typos are slipping in and wanted to address some of the more common ones, for example, were instead of we're and your instead of you're.

If your organisation is like a lot of other places there would be a template for letters etc pre-covid and so this should not be too obvious.

Personally, the strangest word I have seen in an email to me so far during this period was from my estate agent - "offay" - any guesses...

Personally, the strangest word I have seen in an email to me so far during this period was from my estate agent - "offay" - any guesses...

Au fait?

Or maybe a typo for "covfefe"? You may need to switch to a new estate agent in that case

I think a lot of people will defiantly be seeing loved ones this Christmas