Please advise meaning: tell me what to do

A decision, or the facts

To advise someone is to recommend what they should do, or to give them information. Please advise asks for either, and often both at once: here’s the situation, you decide, and tell me. The word came into English in the 14th century, from Anglo-French aviser, built on avis, “opinion”. The office has been asking for other people’s opinions in writing ever since.

Is please advise correct English

It’s grammatical, formal and a little old-fashioned, the kind of phrase that sounds like a letter even in a chat window. In formal letters it can lean on the inform sense instead: “please advise us of your decision” meant tell us what you decided. Its close relative, “please be advised”, still uses that sense: you are hereby told. One asks for a decision and the other announces one, and both sound like they came on letterhead.

Sent more often than circle back

Across a million work emails sent and received between January 2024 and October 2025, please advise appears 1,459 times, about one email in 690. Circle back appears 533 times, so please advise is sent nearly three times as often. Only four phrases in the count were sent more often. The two work from opposite ends. Circle back postpones a decision, and please advise hands it to somebody else.

Where the impatience comes from

It tends to get typed when something hasn’t been sorted and the writer is fed up with it. Its stiff, legal-letter tone puts distance where a plain question would have done, and the problem lands on the reader with no suggestion attached. A please advise sent with reply all to the whole project team is the email version of standing next to someone’s desk until they look up.

The please advise ping-pong

The phrase is at its worst when two people use it on each other. Procurement asks the project lead which supplier to use, please advise. The project lead replies that procurement owns supplier choice, please advise. Procurement forwards the policy, please advise. A week later the supplier withdraws the quote, and the decision has made itself.

Say what you need

Ask the question you mean, with a date in it:

• “Can you approve the $1,200 quote by Thursday?”
• “Which of these two dates works for you?”
• “I’ll hold the order until I hear from you.”
• “If I don’t hear by Friday, I’ll go with option B.”

The last one turns please advise into a deadline that runs out in your favour. Putting the question in the first line rather than the last is the BLUF habit, and it removes the need for a closing plea. For the days you’d rather type something ruder, how to professionally say it has the polite versions.

When please advise still works

In a formal email to a supplier, a bank or a client’s legal team, please advise reads as normal business English and nobody blinks. With a colleague two desks away, it reads as a summons. The shortened pls advise is worse on both counts: it keeps the summons and drops the manners.

The please advise reply

When an email ends in please advise, answer the question it should have asked. Pick the option, give the date, and say what happens next. If the email never says what the options are, reply with the two you can see and ask which one they meant. It’s quicker than a meeting, and it puts the decision back where it started. If you’re the one who has to decide, decide in the first line and explain after.

Please advise in the dictionary

Revert and as per share its letterhead tone. All three sound like they were written for a filing cabinet and sent to a person.

An email that ends in please advise

Subject: RE: Shipment 2207 held at customs

Hi Marta, the broker says the invoice lists 40 units and the crate holds 48. They need either a corrected invoice or a return label for the extra 8 by Wednesday. Please advise Tell me which one you want.