Our cleaning staff is keeping the flat tidy and in good nick. For your convenience.
Does that read correctly?
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I wouldn't use a full stop in the middle. – Henry Apr 30 '11 at 14:22
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Shouldn't it be "Our cleaning staff are..." – neil Apr 30 '11 at 22:40
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@neil: Is "staff" plural? – Kosmonaut May 01 '11 at 00:05
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@Kosmonaut: Staff is a collective noun and so it seems can either be treated as singular or plural depending on the context. "staff is" sounds very strange to my BrE ears, whereas "Our cleaning team is..." would sound perfectly reasonable. – neil May 02 '11 at 14:11
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@neil: BrE is as you describe, AmE is not. "Staff" is just singular in AmE. – Kosmonaut May 02 '11 at 14:16
3 Answers
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According to this slang usage site, "nick" refers to quality:
nick Adj. Quality. Usually heard in the expressions, good nick or bad nick. E.g. "For that much money, you'd expect it to be in good nick."
So the sentence seems fine in British colloquial English.
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The message seems grammatically correct.
But the OALD states that the expression you used, (in good nick), is informal. Considering the whole message, which appears to be a staff communication, informal language should be avoided.
You can simply say, for example:
"Our cleaning staff is keeping the flat tidy and in good condition. For your convenience."
Alenanno
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well - it's actually rather a joke since that's gonna be written on the housework plan of our flatshare. Does it sound fine then? – Mat Apr 30 '11 at 13:19
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1If the situation doesn't require formal English, I'd say it's fine. :D – Alenanno Apr 30 '11 at 13:26
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For your convenience is a sentence fragment. I would connect it to the previous sentence:
Our cleaning staff is keeping the flat tidy and in good nick, for your convenience.
Loquacity
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