Falling Through or Not Falling Through

[edmondng]

I wish to ask about the use of the word 'not' in conjuction with 'falling through'.

I understand the term 'falling through' is usually referred to as something haing 'failed' or 'cancelled'. However, at other occasions, I have also heard people using it to mean 'getting through'. In this case, can you please advise how the following statement should be used if I wish to convey the meaning of an unsuccessful closure of a business deal. Should it be 'business deals not falling through', or should it be 'business deals falling through'?

Whether as an employee or in business capacity, I have experienced many occasions of incomplete projects fulfillment and business deals [not] falling through.

Your advice is greatly appreciated.

[riverkid]

Originally Posted by edmondng

I wish to ask about the use of the word 'not' in conjuction with 'falling through'.

I understand the term 'falling through' is usually referred to as something haing 'failed' or 'cancelled'. However, at other occasions, I have also heard people using it to mean 'getting through'.

I haven't heard it to mean 'getting through', Edmond, though I could be missing the necessary context in my mind.

In this case, can you please advise how the following statement should be used if I wish to convey the meaning of an unsuccessful closure of a business deal. Should it be 'business deals not falling through', or should it be 'business deals falling through'?

Whether as an employee or in business capacity, I have experienced many occasions of incomplete projects fulfillment and business deals [not] falling through.

Your advice is greatly appreciated.

Substitute 'failing' for 'falling through' and you should have your answer.

[David L.]

Both as an employee and in business, I have experienced many instances where projects failed to complete/negotiations have broken down, or business deals fell through.

Do you really mean 'projects', or 'negotiations'?

'whether' would have been appropriate if you had written:
Whether in private transactions or in business, you should anticipate that some deals will fall through.

I wonder if the 'getting through' reference is in terms of the use of 'fall through' as in,
"Despite all our efforts to detect and prevent child abuse in families, there remain instances where cases do fall through the net."
That is, they still occur, and in that sense 'get through all efforts of detection'