The question of the agreement of “informed” comes up in every professional email, every report, every formal message. Should one write “I keep you informed,” “informed,” or “informed”? The answer lies in a precise grammatical mechanism, but it becomes complicated as soon as the pronoun “you” comes into play, as it masks both the gender and the number of the person being addressed.
Past participle adjective or agreement with “avoir”: two mechanisms not to be confused
The most common confusion is to apply the rule of the past participle used with the auxiliary “avoir” where there is no auxiliary at all. In “I keep you informed,” the conjugated verb is “keep.” The word “informed” functions here as a predicate adjective of the direct object “you”.
It therefore agrees in gender and number with this pronoun, exactly as in “I find you tired” or “I believe you sincere.”
The construction “she informed me” follows a different logic. “Informed” is this time a past participle conjugated with “avoir.” The agreement depends on the position of the direct object complement: the direct object “me” is placed before the verb, so the agreement is made. If “me” refers to a woman, one writes “she informed me.” If “me” refers to a man, “she informed me” remains invariable in gender.
Confusing these two cases amounts to treating the question of the agreement of informed and informed as a single block, whereas French grammar clearly distinguishes between the predicate of the direct object and the past participle with “avoir.”
Agreement of “informed” with “you”: the four concrete cases
The pronoun “you” is the crux of the problem. In French, it can refer to a single person (polite form) or several. And in each case, the gender of the persons referred to changes the ending.
- You refers to a single man: “I keep you informed” (masculine singular, no visible mark).
- You refers to a single woman: “I keep you informed” (addition of -e for feminine).
- You refers to several people including at least one man: “I keep you informed” (masculine plural, addition of -s).
- You refers to an exclusively female group: “I keep you informed” (feminine plural, -es).
The agreement never depends on the person writing, but always on the person to whom the message is addressed. A man writing to a woman will note “I keep you informed.” A woman writing to a man will note “I keep you informed.” This attribution error is one of the most common in professional emails.
Gender-neutral writing: circumventing the problem when the recipient is unknown
In a collective email or a standard form, it sometimes happens that one does not know the gender or number of the recipients. Should one then write “informed(e)(s)” with parentheses?
The Quebec Office of the French Language recommends gender-neutral formulations that avoid choosing an ending. Instead of “I will keep you informed(e)(s),” one can write “I will send you the information” or “I will communicate the follow-up.” The meaning remains the same, and the agreement problem disappears.
In France, the framework is more restrictive for administrative documents. The circular of November 21, 2017, regarding feminization rules recommends not using abbreviated forms like the middle dot in texts published in the Official Journal. The middle dot is not considered an acceptable solution in this regulatory context.
When reformulation is not possible
Some sentences do not lend themselves to gender-neutral reformulation without losing clarity. “We will keep you informed of the follow-up on your file” carries a nuance of commitment that “we will communicate the follow-up” does not quite convey. In this case, the masculine plural remains the default form in traditional grammar when the audience is mixed or indeterminate.
Verb “inform” conjugated: the pitfalls of the infinitive and the future
Another source of errors concerns the confusion between “inform” (infinitive) and “informed” (past participle). The classic method works well: replace with a third group verb like “sell.” If “sold” fits, write “informed.” If “sell” fits, keep the infinitive “inform.”
In the future, “we will keep you informed” does not pose a difficulty of agreement on the verb itself, but the ending of the participle remains subject to the same rules. The tense of the verb “keep” does not change the agreement of the participle: present, future, conditional, “informed” always agrees with the pronoun it qualifies.
The case of the pronoun “we”
“Thank you for keeping us informed” follows the same logic. If “we” refers to a mixed or masculine group, one writes “informed.” If “we” refers exclusively to women, “informed” is required. The trap is the same: the agreement is made with the real referent of the pronoun, not with the subject of the sentence.
The difficulty of the agreement of “informed” lies less in the rule itself than in the precise identification of the word with which the participle must agree. In “keep informed,” it is a predicate of the direct object. In “have informed,” it is a past participle with “avoir.” Two constructions, two reflexes. Identifying which one is at play in the sentence is enough, in the vast majority of cases, to choose the correct ending.
