Notice, report and the register shift between them
The Govt HSS, Palakkad, will hold its Arts Day inter-house competitions on 14 November, 9 a.m., in the school auditorium. Entries must reach the cultural secretary by 11 November, 4 p.m.; late entries will not be accepted. The school magazine team needs a report of no more than 120 words after the event. Rahul, the cultural secretary, drafts a notice: 'Respected teachers and dear friends, We are organising Arts Day competitions on 14 November. Interested students should give their names to me. Rahul.' He also drafts the report opening: 'I am very happy to inform you that our Arts Day was conducted successfully.' The staff editor returns both drafts with the comment that the notice must be within 50 words and that both pieces must follow the school's standard format. Rahul has one free period before the 4 p.m. submission deadline and an inter-house rehearsal at 3 p.m.
1. List the format and register faults in Rahul's notice and rewrite it in 50 words or fewer.
Read the worked answer
Faults: (1) a salutation - notices carry none; (2) first person 'We are organising' and 'to me', where a notice is issued in the institution's name; (3) no date of issue; (4) no venue or time; (5) no heading or subject line, so the reader cannot scan it; (6) the signatory's name without designation, so readers cannot tell whose authority the deadline carries; (7) not boxed, which is the conventional visual signal of a notice.
Rewrite (42 words):
GOVT HSS, PALAKKAD - NOTICE - 8 November ARTS DAY COMPETITIONS Inter-house competitions will be held on 14 November, 9 a.m., in the school auditorium. Entries must reach the undersigned by 11 November, 4 p.m. Late entries will not be accepted. Rahul, Cultural Secretary
The test is not decoration: each element answers a reader's question (what, when, where, by when, authorised by whom).
2. Why is 'I am very happy to inform you' wrong for a magazine report, and what tense and voice should the report use? Rewrite that opening sentence.
Read the worked answer
The sentence is lifted from letter register. A report is an impersonal record of a completed event, written in the third person and past tense; the reporter's feelings are irrelevant to the record and the first person shifts attention to the writer. A magazine reader wants the event, not the reporter's mood.
Use past tense throughout, and passive voice where the doer is obvious or unimportant ('prizes were distributed', 'entries were received'). Evaluation belongs in quoted opinion ('the judge, Ms Nair, said...'), never in the reporter's own adjectives.
Rewrite: 'The Arts Day inter-house competitions of Govt HSS, Palakkad, were held on 14 November in the school auditorium.'
Note what changed: past tense ('were held'), third person, factual ordering (institution, event, date, venue), and no evaluative adjective before the facts have been reported.
3. When the notice's facts reappear in the report, which of them must change, and why? State two examples.
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Dates, names and numbers must stay exact; modality and tense must change, because the notice looks forward and the report looks back.
Example 1: 'Entries must reach the undersigned by 11 November, 4 p.m.' becomes 'Entries were received by the cultural secretary until 11 November, 4 p.m.' The rule is preserved but reported as a fact about what happened; keeping 'must' in the report would address the reader as if the event were still to come.
Example 2: 'Late entries will not be accepted' becomes 'Late entries were not accepted' or, more accurately, 'The organisers did not accept late entries.' 'Will' in a report is a tense error, not a stylistic choice.
Marking principle: a copied sentence that keeps the notice's future tense or imperative is a register failure, even if every fact is correct. Students should reread each transferred sentence and ask: does this describe the future or the past?