I heard this yesterday from a customer-service agent.<\/p>\n
Problems:<\/strong> Explanation:<\/strong> The agent wanted to confirm that the telephone number that she had would be a valid number to call in the event of getting disconnected during the current call.<\/p>\n Removing the preposition “at” from the end<\/em> of the question requires rewording “to reach you … at?” as “at which to reach you …?”; that solves the first problem.<\/p>\n The second problem comes from laziness on the part of the agent. This is obvious when one realizes that “back” was a substitute for “in the event that we get disconnected”. This gives us the solution to the second problem.<\/p>\n Solution:<\/strong> I heard this yesterday from a customer-service agent. Problems: 1. The question ended on a preposition. 2. The word “back” is a poor substitute for what the agent should have said. Explanation: The full question was “Is this a good number to reach you back at?” The agent wanted to confirm that the telephone number…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-263","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-prepositions"],"yoast_head":"\n
\n1. The question ended on a preposition.
\n2. The word “back” is a poor substitute for what the agent should have said.<\/p>\n
\nThe full question was “Is this a good number to reach you back at?”<\/p>\n
\n“… good number at which to reach you in the event that we get disconnected?”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"