Let me tell you about

If you were going to describe something which was going to take a little while, and you were just being conversational or giving polite information, would you start with,“Let me tell you about”? If you said it in a friendly tone of voice, would it sound like you were putting yourself above the listener or just that you wanted to tell them about something? It’s stuck in my head and I can’t quite place it.

It is a friendly way to introduce a story.

It would make a fairly condescending intro to an explanation of your life philosophy.

Anyway tone of voice and body language are at least as important as the actual words you choose.

So be not afeared of using “Let me tell you about”! It’s a phrasal sensation that’s sweepin’ the whole cyber-nation!

To the above poster: I was talking about spoken English, where such phrases can sound considerably different than when written down, and are often used in different ways.

Yeah, when written down in pen or pencil the phrase “Let me tell you about” sounds like, “Scratch, scribble, scratch. . . .” When written with a typewriter or keyboard, it sounds like, “Clickety, click, clickety. . . .” When spoken, it sounds like, “Let me tell you about.” I agree. Quite different.

In speaking, “Let me tell you about” is usually used to introduce a description, an explanation, or a story. In writing, as far as I can tell, it’s used for the same purposes, in the same way. Not meaning to be a contrarian, or anything like that. . . . :slight_smile:

My point was that if there are about 118,000 instances of it on “the google corpus,” it’s probably not out of the ordinary, and since it contains no obscenity, it’s probably safe to use.

Definitely better than “May I ask a question?”.