Alliance Acceptance Question

FIRST General Forum
1

Hello,

I was wondering whether when accepted teams typically say

Team _____ Gratefully accepts

or

Team ______ Graciously accepts

I have heard both and still don’t know which one is more correct or more typically used by teams…

  • Graciously
  • Gratefully

0 voters

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2

Also, if you say something else interesting feel free to say it here:

3

Gratefully accept
Graciously decline

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4

I think I have heard “graciously accept” the most, but “gratefully accept” is the more correct way to say it.

I have also head “we accept your gracious offer”.

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5

First pick is gracious
Second pick is grateful
Decline is respectful

Edit — at the EMCC offseason event in 2018, our team representative said something along the lines of “the gracious team 3082 graciously accepts the gracious offer made by these gracious teams”. How else would other teams know how GP we are :stuck_out_tongue: ?

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6

I mostly hear graciously, but the language lover in me still cringes inside every time. I’d rather no adverbs at all, unless the accepting team can come up with something witty, or at least uses something proper like “happily”, “joyfully”, “gratefully”, or “enthusiastically”. [added] I totally concur with @pkrishna3082 that declining could also be respectfully declines.

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7

I specifically told our team rep not to say either. At worst you’re tripping over a weird grammatical hurdle. At best you sound exactly the same as everybody else, which trancends boring by miles.

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8

What do you say instead our team has always done one or the other

9
  • No adverb at all; perhaps you could name the teams, such as “abcd accepts an alliance with efgi and jklm” if you want a few more words.
  • Gratefully, joyously, happily, emphatically, enthusiastically [or yes, ecstatically as suggested next post]
  • Something witty and related to the teams involved, e.g. “accepts your invitation to the green alliance”
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10

“Ecstatically” seemed to go pretty well at DCMP for us.

Then again, I was the guy saying it, so I’m slightly biased.

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11

You add a pun to it for excitement. For instance, we’d like to lift-off or team specific like 33 might say we’d like to bee a part of your alliance. I’ve seen we accept your gracious offer, we graciously accept, and we gratefully accept. Plus my fair share of we respectively decline

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12

I just made a rule for myself to never refer to my team as preforming an action in a gracious or related manner. “Team 330 accepts your gracious offer” is the only time I’ve said it because it’s in reference to another alliance being gracious. At the very least, it’s fun to come up with something unusual to break up the pattern. “Team 330 would like some Spam (180)” stands out the best, as well as some references to the season, like “Invites our LA regional winning alliance captain, the Circuit Breakers”.

My bread and butter is “Team 330 requests the assistance of team XYZ” or “Teams 330 and ABC invite team XYC to join our alliance”.

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13

We graciously appreciate your gracious offer to join your gracious alliance, however we graciously decline your gracious offer to form our own gracious alliance, have a graciously professional day!

In seriousness, read #6 (and then read the rest of the blog cause it’s absolutely amazing): https://johnvneun.com/blog/2019/3/21/jvn-top-9-district-changes

“Yup”, “absolutely”, “heck ya”, “we’d love to” all work 100 times better then “we graciously accept”. Literally anything other then graciously accept, idk about others, but I personally cringe and hold my head in my hands every time i hear it.

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14

It doesn’t really matter. There is no defined acceptable phrase. As long as you say something. Don’t just be like “no” or “we decline”.
Some of the best times are when people say something punny.

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15

yep. I’m 100% going to say this lol
/s

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16

“Graciously accepts” means your team is charitible in accepting an offer.

“We accept your gracious offer” sends the correct message–the other team graciously extended the offer.

That said, everyone knows what you mean.

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17

@GeeTwo basically covered it. I’ve seen a number of creative or original acceptance responses*. Just “accepts” with nothing else seems a bit plain to me, but please anything else besides “graciously” or “gratefully”.

*On one occasion, a student tripped over his words and ended up with “graishfully”, which I thought was kinda funny.

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18

wow i should just say graishfully lol

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19

To me, the bottom line is that accepting (or declining) an offer of alliance is (or should be) based on what the team deems to be in its own best interest. Second only to the duration of a match, alliance selection is the time you let GP go and do what is best for your team.

And, disagreeing with @NShep98, I have no problem with “gratefully accepting”, especially as a second or (at CMP) third pick. (Though enthusiastically or similar would be even better.)

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20

I don’t think anyone is arguing that? But it doesn’t mean you let your respect and yes, even gracious professionalism, go during alliance selection.