proofreading

[Seiichi MYOGA]

I'm thinking of using (1) for something.

(1) You can say "I don't know" when you have done long and assiduous research into a subject. But you can't say that when you haven't even bothered to look into the subject.

Do you think there's any grammatical or stylistic mistakes?

Thank you in advance
Seiichi MYOGA

[Bridget]

I'm thinking of using (1) for something.

(1) You can say "I don't know" when you have done long and assiduous research into a subject. But you can't say that when you haven't even bothered to look into the subject.

Do you think there's any grammatical or stylistic mistakes?

Thank you in advance
Seiichi MYOGA

I'd use "carried out" instead of "done", there. I also would make it one sentence with a comma and "but".

[Seiichi MYOGA]

Dear Bridget,

I appreciate your help and comments.

Seiichi MYOGA

[Sean Priestley]

change this:
"when" to "if"
"have done" to "had done" ("haven't" to "hadn't")
and avoid contractions ("haven't" to "have not", etc.)

[Pete]

change this:
"when" to "if"
"have done" to "had done" ("haven't" to "hadn't")
and avoid contractions ("haven't" to "have not", etc.)
I can't see a reason for the suggestion to change to the past perfect tense; the tenses in the original sentences sound natural to me; past perfect seems doesn't seem correct.

(Back to the original question: Of course you didn't ask for a comment on the meaning of your statement, but I'm curious about why you disapprove of people saying "I don't know" when in fact they don't know anything about a subject.)