The postponement letter that blames the coach company
Heavy rain has forced the Mai Po nature reserve to close its boardwalk, and the S1 excursion for 128 students, due to leave tomorrow at 8.15 a.m., must be postponed. Each student paid HK$180, collected through the school's ePayment system. A provisional replacement date of 5 December has been reserved but not confirmed.
You are drafting the eClass letter to parents under the Principal's name. The limit is 250 words. Your draft opens: 'Due to unforeseen circumstances beyond our control, the captioned activity has been unavoidably postponed until further notice.' It states: 'The $180 fee will be automatically credited to your ePayment account within three working days.' It also says: 'Our coach company, which has repeatedly failed to confirm its booking, has let us down.' It closes: 'Students are required to return all consent forms immediately.'
The finance office confirms refunds take ten working days and are issued only on written request via the eNotice form. The Principal wants to add a 90-word paragraph explaining the boardwalk closure in detail.
1. Identify the sentences that must change and say what each change protects.
Read the worked answer
Three sentences, three different kinds of risk.
'Due to unforeseen circumstances beyond our control, the captioned activity has been unavoidably postponed until further notice.' Bureaucratic vagueness at the exact moment parents need clarity. 'Captioned activity' assumes the reader still has the original notice; 'until further notice' tells 128 households nothing about what happens next. Rewriting this protects the school's relationship with parents - the first sentence is where they decide whether to trust the rest of the letter.
The refund sentence. It is factually wrong on two counts: ten working days, not three, and on request, not automatic. This is the most serious problem in the draft. Every one of 128 families will act on it, discover it is untrue, and phone the office. Rewriting it protects the school from a justified complaint and from the administrative cost of correcting a written error. Financial statements in a letter must match what the finance office will actually do.
'Our coach company … has let us down.' Remove entirely. A school letter does not assign blame to a contractor; it invites parents to complain to a named third party and may expose the school commercially. It also probably misrepresents the sequence of events. Replacing it with a neutral statement of what has been rebooked protects the school and keeps the letter's focus on the reader's next step.
The closing line needs work too - 'students are required' addresses the wrong audience and no consent form is needed while the trip is postponed.
2. Rewrite the opening paragraph in no more than 60 words. The first sentence must give parents the decision.
Read the worked answer
Rewrite (54 words):
'The S1 visit to Mai Po on 14 November has been postponed. The reserve has closed its boardwalk after 180 mm of rain in the past week and will not reopen it before the end of the month. We have provisionally reserved 5 December and will confirm by Friday 21 November. No action is needed from you at this stage.'
Why it is built this way:
- Sentence one delivers the decision. Parents scan for 'is it still on?' and should not have to reach the third line to find out.
- Sentence two gives one concrete justification. A number (180 mm) and the reserve's own closure does the work that 'unforeseen circumstances' fails to do, and it locates the cause outside the school without blaming anyone.
- Sentence three gives the next date and a date for confirmation. 'Until further notice' becomes a commitment the school can keep.
- Sentence four removes an unnecessary action. An action demanded of 128 households that has no purpose is the fastest way to generate phone calls.
The paragraph also models the tone for the rest of the letter: short declaratives, one fact per sentence, no passive constructions that hide who is doing what.
3. The Principal wants a 90-word paragraph on the boardwalk closure. Keep it or cut it? Argue the case.
Read the worked answer
Cut it to one clause - the second sentence above already does the job.
The argument for cutting: the letter is capped at 250 words, and 90 words is 36% of the budget spent on a detail that changes no parent's decision or action. Parents' two live questions are 'what happens to my child's trip' and 'what do I do now'. Hydrology answers neither. A long explanation also reads as defensiveness - a letter that protests too much about the rain invites the question of why the school did not check the forecast sooner.
The argument against cutting entirely: a bare 'closed' invites suspicion that the school cancelled for its own convenience. One concrete fact, attributed to the reserve's own notice, closes that gap at the cost of a sentence.
The compromise I would put to the Principal: keep the 180 mm and the reserve's closure in the opening, and add a single line near the end - 'The reserve has offered S1 groups priority booking for the first week of December' - which converts the explanation into reassurance about the rescheduled visit.
The principle: length in a letter to parents is allocated by what the reader must do, not by what the writer wants to explain. The 90 words are better spent on the refund procedure, which every parent will act on.