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If someone asks me

Does 8:30 am work for you for the meeting, or should have it 2 in the afernoon?

I want to say, of these two options I choose the 2pm one. What is the colloquial word/expression of saying I choose or I select?

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    Probably in the interests of politeness, we don't normally use any variant of "I xxxx option X". We tend to say things like "X would be fine [by me]". Explicitly saying what you choose implies you're appropriating the choice to yourself, whereas one is normally concerned to make it sound more like a mutually-agreed consensus in such contexts.
    – FumbleFingers
    Feb 19, 2013 at 21:17
  • And since you've already used "work for someone" in the question, the reply in kind would be: "Two o'clock works for me."
    – Jim
    Feb 19, 2013 at 22:38

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There are several ways one might indicate which time is best:

8:30 sounds good.

Let's go with 8:30.

How about 8:30.

8:30 works.

8:30 would be fine.

I would avoid saying I choose 8:30 for the reasons FumbleFingers has mentioned. I would prefer 8:30 is more polite, but I would probably use the above forms instead.

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  • +1, noting as Jim did that "8:30 works" would be the appropriate response to the form "Does 8:30 work?"
    – DCShannon
    Feb 24, 2016 at 0:14
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The most common one (particularly in business English) is I'll go with, or we'll go with if the decision is for more than one person.

Let's go with having the meeting at 4. That way we can leave early if the meeting is short.

I'm going to go with the chilli-mayo dip, please.

We went with a green cover for the document, because we felt that best represented the company's values

Note that with the exception of the past-tense form (eg we went with green because it matches the company logo), "go with" is very informal for use in formal writing.

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Yet another option is I would prefer X.

Would you like coffee or tea?
I would prefer coffee, please.

Would you like meet at 8:30 or 2 in the afternoon?
I would prefer 2 o'clock as I have another appointment in the morning.

Note that prefer is quite soft word. It suggests that any option is fine for you, in general, but you have reasons to choose a certain one. If you state your reasons, it would become obvious that another option is not actually fine for you. Anyway, using a polite expression is never wrong.

Also, if neither option is good for you, I would rather is the way to go:

Would you like meet at 8:30 or 2 in the afternoon?
I would rather meet tomorrow as I'm not in the city today.

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    Not sure that rather prefer together means what you intend. You might say, "I'd rather meet tomorrow." But rather prefer means that your preference is set, seemingly against your will, and you would like to have your preference be something different than it is.
    – Jim
    Feb 19, 2013 at 22:41
  • @Jim Good point. Is it the same in all variants of English (US, UK)?
    – Be Brave Be Like Ukraine
    Feb 19, 2013 at 22:46
  • I'm not sure about that.
    – Jim
    Feb 19, 2013 at 22:53
  • @bytebuster I imagine it's true universally. The phrase "rather prefer" doesn't make sense in this context, at least to me. I think it might be possible to construct a context where it does make sense, but I just tried and couldn't come up with one.
    – user230
    Feb 20, 2013 at 8:15

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