Page 127 - How to write effective business English your guide to excellent professional communication by Fiona Talbot

116 How to Write Effective Business English

Correct version:

Sara has received our e-mail. Have you received it too?
As a rule of thumb, simply work out who is doing the action and
make your verb relate to who or what is doing it. In some sentences
you may have to refer back to check.
Incidentally, there are certain words in English where it is pos-
sible to use a singular word in a plural sense too. Examples are:
government, council, committee, company.
So in UK English, you can write:
The government is changing the law on this.

The government are changing the law on this.
The reasoning behind this is that these nouns can be viewed as enti-
ties by themselves or as bodies of people. On this track, another
often-used word comes to mind. This is the word ‘staff’, where it
means personnel. It is used as a singular in US English but exists
only in the plural in UK English. So UK English says: ‘The staff are
taking a vote on this.’ US English says: ‘The staff is taking a vote on
this.’

Question tags

These are used a lot in English conversation, and non-NE speakers
can find them quite hard to master. As they are increasingly used in
workplace writing too, here are some tips.
Speakers and writers use question tags to encourage their listen-
ers or readers to respond. It helps check that people agree or under-
stand what you are saying or writing.
Examples are:

It’s a good outcome, isn’t it?
You don’t have a meeting today, do you? You can make it in
time, can’t you?