a soft imperative artfully couched in innocuous language; generally converts the preceding or following phrase into a request, as in “If you could have those pages ready in an hour, that would be great”; used by those who want to indicate their requirements without calling attention to the power dynamics of a situation, although all parties understand them implicitly; there is no negative counterpart to this statement, as in, “If you could send me the customer analysis, that would be terrible”; similar in style and intent to Why don’t you go ahead and