Dear Email Scam: Please Proofread Your Work Before Submitting

It's one thing to be spammed by people soliciting your bank account information. It's quite another to be spammed ungrammatically by people soliciting your bank account information. It does not--how shall I put this?--inspire confidence.

Thus, the following post.

Dear Email Scam:

I would really prefer that you proofread your work before submitting to my attention. For example, let us take the following message.

It is obvious that you have not received your fund which is to the tune of 5.8million dollars due to past corrupt Governmental Officials who almost held the fund to themselves for their selfish reason and some individuals who have taken advantage of your fund all in an attempt to swindle your fund which has led to so many losses from your end and unnecessary delay in the receipt of your fund.

Oh, la, la. Where do I begin?? First of all, it is customary to include a standard greeting or salutation at the beginning of the message. Something as simple as: "To Whom It May Concern," will do, although if you would like to form any kind of interpersonal relationship with me before requesting that I give you my social security number, you might bother to look up and include my name--spelled correctly, of course!

Second of all, your description of both the sum I am allegedly due and the corruption of the officials who have delayed its receipt is, I'm sorry to say, a hopeless run-on. How can I possibly take an interest in the procedures I will need to take in order to recoup my money--which, as you specify further in the email, involve providing you my current bank account info--if I am still floundering through a forest of interlinked independent clauses?

Let's take the next section:

The National Central Bureau of Interpol enhanced by the United Nations and Federal Bureau of Investigation have successfully passed a mandate...

Hmmm. I'm not sure "enhanced by" is the right word choice. Do you mean "supervised by," perhaps? Or maybe "with the cooperation of"? And careful--you're missing some commas!

...to boost the exercise of clearing all foreign debts owed to you and other individuals and organizations who have been found not to have receive their Contract Sum, Lottery/Gambling, Inheritance and the likes.

Again, I'm uncertain of your word choices. I'm not sure that either boost or exercise convincingly emulates the language of a valid financial communication, and I'm disinclined to permit my checking account to be emptied out by someone unfamiliar with the correct past participle form of the verb "receive."

Thank you so much for your time and attention to this matter. I look forward to trapping your emails in my spam filter in the future.

Love,
Lauren Oliver