Choosing and Correcting a Platform-Change Notice
Engineering work will close Platform 1 at a small station from 18:00 to 21:00 on Friday. Train 12841, which normally departs from Platform 1 at 18:40, will leave from Platform 3 instead. Passengers are advised to arrive 20 minutes early and to confirm the platform on enquiry number 139. As the MTS on duty, you must put up one notice at the entrance. Three drafts are on the table.
Draft A: 'The train no. 12841 will be departed from platform no. 3 instead of platform no. 1 on Friday. Passengers are requested to reached the station 20 minutes before and confirmed the platform from enquiry no. 139.'
Draft B: 'Train 12841 will depart from Platform 3, not Platform 1, at 18:40 on Friday. Please arrive by 18:20 and check the platform on 139 before leaving home.'
Draft C: 'Due to engineering work, Platform 3 will not be used on Friday evening; all trains will leave from Platform 1.'
The station master wants the notice up in ten minutes.
1. List the grammar and usage errors in Draft A and give the correction for each, saying briefly why it is wrong.
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- 'will be departed' → 'will depart'. Depart is intransitive here; a train departs, it is not 'departed' by anyone. The passive has no agent, so it is both ungrammatical in sense and confusing.
- 'to reached' → 'to reach'. After 'requested to', the infinitive is needed, not the past tense.
- 'and confirmed' → 'and confirm'. The two verbs are joined by 'and' after 'requested to', so both must be in the base form: 'to reach ... and confirm ...'.
- 'from enquiry no. 139' → 'on enquiry number 139'. A platform is confirmed on or through an enquiry service, not from it; and 'no.' is better written out in a public notice.
- 'The train no. 12841' → 'Train 12841'. Style, not grammar: public notices drop the redundant 'no.' and the article before a train number.
Five small faults in two sentences tell a reader the notice was not checked - which undermines the instruction itself.
2. Between Draft B and Draft C, which would you put up, and why? Give two specific reasons based on the facts in the situation.
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Put up Draft B.
- Draft C reverses the fact. Platform 1 is the one closed for engineering work, and Platform 3 is the substitute. Draft C tells passengers that Platform 3 will not be used and that all trains leave from Platform 1 - sending them to the platform that is shut. A notice that is confidently wrong is worse than no notice.
- Draft B gives what a passenger actually needs: the train number, the correct platform, the departure time, a deadline to arrive and a way to re-check. It states the change positively ('Platform 3, not Platform 1') so the correction is understood at a glance, which matters for readers who saw the old platform earlier.
Draft C is also over-wide: it says 'all trains', although only this departure is affected. Specific and true beats broad and false.
3. Rewrite Draft B as a notice board entry of not more than 25 words that can be read in a hurry.
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Model notice:
Notice: Train 12841, Friday 18:40, will depart from Platform 3, not Platform 1. Arrive by 18:20. Enquiry: 139.
Why this works: the change is in the first line, the two platform numbers sit side by side so the difference is impossible to miss, the time and the arrival deadline are stated once each, and the verification number is last, where a worried passenger looks. No 'hereby', no 'passengers are requested to kindly', no passive voice. A person walking past has about three seconds; the notice is built for those three seconds.