[Grammar] Should or if

[deeppra]

Respected members,

are below two sentences same?

1. If you have any query, please contact me.

2. should you have any query, please contact me.

Best Regards

 

[Raymott]

Respected members,

are below two sentences same?

1. If you have any queries, please contact me.

2. should you have any queries, please contact me.

Best Regards

They mean the same. The first is much more common these days.

 

[riquecohen]

Query is a word seldom heard in AmE. Question is far more common.

 

[bhaisahab]

Query is a word seldom heard in AmE. Question is far more common.

"Query" is used in BrE. I wouldn't like to guess the frequency of its use compared to "question" but I certainly hear it.

 

[5jj]

"Query" is used in BrE. I wouldn't like to guess the frequency of its use compared to "question" but I certainly hear it.

I agree, but it must be our area of work. [bnc] British National Corpus gives 25,673 citations for 'question', and 609 for 'query'.

 

[Barb_D]

That's true -- in the U.S., queries are much more commonly associated with the IT field (run a query) than with simply asking a question.

 

[5jj]

That's true -- in the U.S., queries are much more commonly associated with the IT field (run a query) than with simply asking a question.

What follows, Barb is not an attempt to prove you wrong, but rather a suggestion that corpora, while immensely valuable, should not be regarded as infallible deities.

I believe what you wrote - I've heard it myself, but the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA) gives 132,844 citations for 'question', 1,187 for query and, for 'run a query'? None. The [bnc] BNC Simple Search - Using the BNC is equally free of 'run a query' citations.

This goes to confirm, I feel, that present corpora are, as yet, too dependent on the written word.