Dear Client: Difference between revisions

51 bytes removed ,  12 January 2022
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{{a|email|}}At the [[JC]] we struggle to understand the pathology of someone who addresses an [[out of office]] auto-reply to “[[Dear Sender]]”, but we suspect it is along the same lines as the commuter who cheerily says “Thanks, Driver!” as he alights, thereby showing unusual courtesy and then trampling all over it in the space of two words.
{{a|email|}}At the [[JC]] we struggle to understand the pathology of someone who addresses an [[out of office]] auto-reply to “[[Dear Sender]]”, but we suspect it is along the same lines as the commuter who cheerily says “Thanks, Driver!” as he alights, thereby showing unusual courtesy and then trampling all over it in the space of two words.


“[[Dear Client]]” is much the same. It is bad business: “dear” conveys a degree of (professionally appropriate) intimacy with your correspondent. Nothing untoward or smutty about that even in these perpetually outraged times, of course, but it does imply you care enough to keep a proper record of their main contact details so that you can, with confidence,  ''know their names''.  
“[[Dear Client]]” is much the same. It is bad business: “dear” conveys a degree of (professionally appropriate) intimacy with your correspondent. Nothing untoward about that, of course, but it does imply you care enough to keep a proper record of their main contact details so that you can, with confidence,  ''know their names''.  


“[[Client]]” implies quite the opposite: either that you ''don’t'' know or that you don’t ''care'': it conjures a faceless bovine — usually a herd of them — tethered to a stall in the milking shed. Now if someone is sufficiently dear to you for you to be warning them about the possible consequences of Korea’s new short-selling regulations, query whether a mass mailout to them and five hundred other clients is really the right way to go. Mass, one-way, sent-from-an-unmonitored-account communications tend, by their existence, so say “you are ''not'' dear enough to justify me writing to you in person, much less calling you up.”
“[[Client]]” implies quite the opposite: either that you ''don’t'' know or that you don’t ''care'': it conjures a faceless bovine — usually a herd of them — tethered to a stall in the milking shed. Now if someone is sufficiently dear to you for you to be warning them about the possible consequences of Korea’s new short-selling regulations, query whether a mass mailout to them and five hundred other clients is really the right way to go. Mass, one-way, sent-from-an-unmonitored-account communications tend, by their existence, so say “you are ''not'' dear enough to justify me writing to you in person, much less calling you up.”