present progressive - "We are confirming your order within 24 hours." vs "We will ~ "



Simply select from our online catalog and we are confirming your order within 24 hours.



Is this sentence wrong? I would get that as "We are monitoring your orders", but it seems that I can't use "confirm" for that meaning.


Am I right?



Answer



In Standard English, we are confirming is the present continuous and indicates an possibly lengthy activity which is occurring now. Your "we are monitoring" is a good example of this; the monitoring can continue over a period, and you have caught a particular instant in time.


It's possible that "we are confirming your order" could fall into that usage, if the work to confirm an order might take some time and you have phoned the company to ask what is going on. In that case, that lengthy operation is identified as happening at that moment.


Once you push the confirmation into the future with "within 24 hours", the present continuous is no longer valid. It would be possible to say "we will be confirming your order within the next 24 hours," but again that indicates a fairly lengthy process which will take time to carry out. It's unlikely that any confirmation should be drawn-out: it's more likely to be an almost instantaneous "Thanks; got that."


Thus a simple future-tense "We will confirm" is more appropriate.


There may be dialects of English where the use of the present continuous is more widespread (my experiences of Indian English tend to point to this usage there) and in those dialects it may be quite valid and understood.


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