Email Request to Employees Revise the following paragraph from an email message to employees. Focus on use of voice, appropriate sentence length, and word selection to make the passage effective. With the approach of the end of this fiscal year, it has

Question

been recommended by our accountant that the monies allocated in the budget to capital equipment be used as soon as is expedient. Therefore, as has been our practice in the past, we are requesting that each of you compile a comprehensive detailed list outlining your requests for new equipment which you may have put on the back burner, so to speak. It would be appreciated if you could provide this information to me by the first of next week so that I can begin to process all orders prior to the expiration of the fiscal year. It is anticipated that a multitude of requests will be simultaneously submitted by departmental heads; it is highly probable that requests for equipment will be processed in the order received and delayed requests may not be funded. I sincerely appreciate your cooperation in our efforts to upgrade some of our capital equipment.

Answer 1

The solution should be reflect active voice, to increase emphasis and clarity. Some complex sentences can be shortened and unnecessary clauses eliminated. Difficult words can be replaced in some cases with simple words. Important ideas can be better emphasized by careful placement in sentences and the paragraph.

A proposed solution follows:

It's now the end of the fiscal year, and our accountant suggests that we spend the rest of the capital equipment money that we budgeted this year. I'd like everyone to send me a list of the new equipment that you would like to purchase, including the catalog item number and price if available. Many departments are submitting similar requests, and past experience shows that it's "first come, first serve.". We may not be able to get all of the equipment on our wish list, but we do have funds to purchase some items. Please submit your information by next Monday so that our department can submit our requests immediately.