That email is sitting in your inbox. You know the answer to the question it’s asking, but those two words are still haunting you: “please advise.” It can show up in the subject line, somewhere in the middle of a message, or, most frequently, right before the signature at the end of the email. But what do you do with it?
The good news: if you know the answer to the main question in the email, just write your reply and boom! You’ve “advised.” At the most basic level, “please advise” is a request for advice or answers. But to some people, it can come across as redundant, stuffy, or passive aggressive.
Please advise: What does “Please advise” mean?
Depending on the context, the person who’s using the phrase, and what that person wants, the phrase can have a few different meanings. Here are a few possible synonyms for “please advise”:
- Let me know
- Get back to me
- Can you give me your thoughts, answers, or input?
- Give me the information I already asked for in the body of this email
- I’m waiting for you to respond
As you can see, “please advise” can be interpreted in a variety of ways. Its primary meaning is a request for information, but it can also come across as having one of those last two meanings—and that’s not so pleasant. It all depends on context.
“Please advise” as an email ending
The way readers interpret “please advise” depends not only on what the message is about but also on the tone of the rest of the message. In most cases, this confusion can take place when “please advise” appears as the end of an email.
These example emails give a sense of the different ways “please advise” might come across to a reader.
Dear Karen,
I was hoping you could help me go over the training decks. You were the last person to give these trainings, so I’d appreciate some background on the order and how the exercises are supposed to work.
