Pop Culture dictionary
please advise
摆辫濒别别锄听补诲-vahyz]
What does听please advise听mean?
Please advise is a formal request for information, often associated with professional correspondence. The expression is often interpreted as a passive-aggressive phrase in business contexts and tongue-in-cheek in casual contexts.
Where does please advise come from?
Please advise has been used in in formal contexts since at least the 18th century. In early use, the phrase was simply a polite (please) request for the listener or reader to provide some information (advise), as in “please advise your decision” or “please advise听promptly of change of address.” Then and now,听please advise听is听commonly used in legal, commercial, and other official documents.
Please advise became particularly useful in the 19th century for telegraph messages, as each character cost money, prompting great economy in phrasing. As please advise听spread throughout the 1800s, it came to serve as a widely used stock phrase for听reply听or听provide insight听(e.g.,听 please advise by return mail).
Please advise听was carried over into email in the late 20th century, and it became used so commonly that many see the phrase as a business-writing clich茅.
Examples of please advise
Who uses please advise?
As noted,听please听advise is most frequently found in formal writing, but in contemporary business or academic settings, it听has popularly taken on a negative connotation.
Typically ending an email with the phrase before signing off, senders may use please advise听as a serious, forceful way to revisit an issue they feel the recipient has failed to resolve.
To recipients, however, such a听please advise often comes across as curt, even passive-aggressive, despite its polite register.听Please advise can also suggest the sender is dumping an undesirable task onto coworkers.
Outside professional contexts, people still use听please advise as a genuine way to get counsel on some matter and to point out an inconsistency, contradiction, or improbability in a person’s position or argument. More commonly in colloquial language, people use听please advise听ironically,听playing with the stuffy formality of the phrase to get advice, usually on some more trivial matter.
Note
This is not meant to be a formal definition of please advise like most terms we define on 亚洲网紅露点, but is rather an informal word summary that hopefully touches upon the key aspects of the meaning and usage of please advise that will help our users expand their word mastery.