Correcting a Draft Circular Before Issue
A Section Officer in an EPFO regional office has drafted a circular to employers and put it up for approval. The draft reads: (1) "It is intimated that the claims pending beyond 30 days should be disposed off within a fortnight." (2) "Neither the employer nor the employees has submitted the remittance challan." (3) "The office is looking forward to receive your reply at the earliest." (4) "One of the officer has been nominated as nodal officer for the drive." (5) "No sooner the notice was issued than the member approached the Tribunal." (6) "The member is senior than most of his colleagues in the establishment." The Assistant PF Commissioner returns the file with a terse note: "Six constructions are wrong. Correct them, state the rule, and do not turn an order into a request." The circular must go out tomorrow, so the whole draft cannot be rewritten from scratch; each correction has to be defensible line by line, and the tone must remain that of an office order addressed to employers.
1. Identify the error in each of the six sentences, correct it, and name the grammatical rule that governs the correction.
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Sentence (1): "disposed off" → "disposed of". The phrasal verb is dispose of (to deal with or settle); off is a different particle and changes the sense. Rule: fixed verb–preposition combinations cannot be swapped for near-homophones.
Sentence (2): "has" → "have". With neither … nor, the verb agrees with the subject nearer to it. Here that is the employees (plural), so the plural verb is required. Rule: proximity agreement in correlative constructions.
Sentence (3): "to receive" → "to receiving". In look forward to, to is a preposition, not the infinitive marker, so it must be followed by a gerund. Rule: preposition + gerund.
Sentence (4): "One of the officer" → "one of the officers". One of is followed by a plural noun; the singular verb has is nevertheless correct because the grammatical subject is one. Rule: one of + plural noun, singular verb.
Sentence (5): "No sooner the notice was issued" → "No sooner was the notice issued … than". A negative or restrictive adverb at the head of a clause triggers subject–verb inversion; the correlative pair is no sooner … than, never no sooner … then. Rule: inversion after initial negative adverbials.
Sentence (6): "senior than" → "senior to". Senior, junior, superior, inferior, prior are Latin comparatives that take to, not than. Rule: Latin comparative + to.
2. The Section Officer also has to settle two usage choices elsewhere in the circular. Decide and justify: (a) "fewer than 500 claims" or "less than 500 claims"; (b) "the scheme comprises of three components" or "the scheme comprises three components".
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(a) "fewer than 500 claims". Fewer is used with countable nouns - claims can be counted one by one. Less belongs with mass or uncountable nouns (less time, less money) and with measurements treated as a quantity (less than 30 days). The trap is that less than appears correctly in sentence (1)'s time expression, so the writer tends to reuse it with numbers of items. Test: if you can say "one claim, two claims", use fewer.
(b) "The scheme comprises three components". Comprise means "consist of" and takes a direct object; writing comprises of duplicates the preposition already built into the verb. The correct alternatives are comprises three components, consists of three components, or is composed of three components. Rule: comprise = include/consist of (no of); compose is used in the passive with of.
Both choices matter in this circular for the same reason: an order that misuses countable quantifiers or a defunct verb form invites employers to treat the text as careless, and a careless order is easier to dispute.
3. Rewrite sentence (1) as a crisp office order without changing its substance, and explain what your rewrite does and does not alter.
Read the worked answer
Rewrite. "All claims pending beyond 30 days must be disposed of within a fortnight; the dealing assistant concerned will record the date of disposal in the claim register."
What is preserved. The 30-day trigger, the fortnight's deadline, and the obligation to dispose of the claims. Nothing in the substance of the instruction changes.
What is altered, and why each alteration is defensible.
- "It is intimated that … should be" is doubly weak: an impersonal intimation plus a modal of recommendation. In an order addressed to employers, the operative verb should be must, which also answers the Assistant PF Commissioner's warning against turning an order into a request.
- The passive should be disposed of conceals who is to act, so compliance cannot be pinned on anyone. Naming the obligation and the recording duty converts a wish into an auditable instruction.
- Splitting into two clauses keeps the audit trail (the register entry) from being buried inside a subordinate clause.
What to watch. The second clause adds a recording requirement that the original did not contain. That is a substantive addition and must be cleared by the approving authority, not slipped in as an editorial improvement. If approval is not available before despatch, drop that clause and issue the order with the first clause alone - an order that is slightly thinner is better than one that legislates a new duty unapproved. If the deadline is meant to bind the office rather than employers, then rewrite in the first person plural ("the office will dispose of …") instead; the actor must be named correctly, not merely named.