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I received a sentence from a person and the sentence seems grammatically wrong

sentence: the letter was sent and follow up from the Department to the embassy.

I think the person intended to say "was followed up from ~", so if I regard this sentence like below

the letter was sent and followed up from the Department to the embassy.

what is the meaning of "be followed up" in the sentence ??

Or maybe the person intended something else using "follow-up" as a single noun in the sentence. How about that ??

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  • Any chance of a bit more context? Commented Feb 1, 2017 at 8:40
  • @dougal ah the person sent me an email and said the letter was sent to the department. I can get that part easily but can not understand 100% since the person made an error. I just assume that it is "be followed up" and would mean "be informed", "be checked", "be recognized", "be noticed", be communicated" or else
    – Sam
    Commented Feb 1, 2017 at 8:43
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    Yes, that is what I would also assume. However, if this is important perhaps you should go back to the original author and ask for clarification. Good luck. Commented Feb 1, 2017 at 8:52
  • The sentence is not grammatical. It appears to be a kind of short-hand, but even so, the syntax is not valid. Perhaps "... with followup from the department".
    – TimR
    Commented Feb 1, 2017 at 13:11
  • Maybe "the letter was sent as follow-up..." ? As in, the embassy contacted the Department, the Department answered, they never got any confirmation their answer was received, so they sent a letter as follow-up to basically say "hey, did you ever get our response?"
    – Adam V
    Commented Feb 1, 2017 at 16:11

1 Answer 1

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In it's original form the sentence is grammatically wrong.

It could have the following meanings :

  • (Someone) tracked the letter sent from the department to the embassy.
  • The letter that was sent to the embassy had been acknowledged/recognized.
  • The embassy confirms that the letter has been received.
  • The embassy has already followed up on the contents of the letter.

These are the ones I can think of. Please check if any of these fits with the rest of the e-mail.

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