Friday, August 21, 2020

I look forward to hearing from you vs I am looking forward to hearing from you

I look forward to hearing from you vs I am looking forward to hearing from you Talk about opening a can of worms! I initially thought the answer to the question of the difference between I look forward to hearing from you and I am looking forward to hearing from you would be theyre interchangeable since both are absolutely correct English. A look around the Internet, however, tells me this minor difference in sentence structure causes quite a bit of controversy. Some say one is informal while the other is formal. Then there are others who say that actually, they see it the other way round and that the one that was declared informal is actually the one they consider formal. Should This Bother You? Probably not. Nobody is going to brand you as illiterate because you choose one of these forms over the other as they both say basically the same thing. But if were going to enter the formal versus informal debate, Id side with those who say I look forward to hearing from you is the formal version and thats not just because they seem to represent a majority and therefore the winning side! Heres why: if  you say I am looking forward to hearing from you, you havent quite got the balls in your court message across strongly enough. Somehow, it seems to me, I look forward to hearing from you is a tiny bit clearer about who has to say something next. The former has a slightly greater nuance pointing towards how pleasant it would be to hear from someone, while the other is sharper, and the focus seems to be on the response youre looking forward to getting. Of course, thats just my opinion. Authorities seem to disagree to disagree, and actually get quite heated arguing for one or the other. Do Apostrophes Make Everything More Friendly? There are those who say I am looking forward to hearing from you, is still formal, whereas using the apostrophe to make I am contract into Im is the informal way of expressing the hope that someone is going to get back to them. I expect most people will be ready to agree that contractions like Im are more informal than the full versions of the words. Again, I cant argue against the reasoning behind this argument while still believing that the I am version places more emphasis on looking forward. Getting It All Mixed-Up Since these phrases are so similar in their meaning, some people mix up the tenses: I am looking forward to hear from you, is a common error. As soon as look gets an ing suffix, the next verb has to have an ing too. Thank goodness it does. English is confusing enough without mixing things up. Nobody Can Quite Put a Finger on It After browsing numerous articles, forums and other interesting places on the Internet, I came to this conclusion: most people agree that I look forward to hearing is more formal and urgent than I am looking forward to hearing, but none of them can quite say why. Since there doesnt appear to be a definite answer to this question, whats your opinion on it? More specifically, why do you feel this way? Let us know your reasons you feel one is more formal than the other. (Photo courtesy of Justin Henry)

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