Rewriting a Cheque-Charges Notice Without Creating a Dispute
You are the assistant manager at the Haldwani branch of a small private bank. The operations head has circulated this draft line for a customer notice: 'The revised cheque-clearing charges are effective 1 April 2025, and it will apply to every instrument received at the counter, including those which are deposited before this date but presented afterwards, however customers holding a Senior Citizen account will be charged as per existing rules only.' The branch manager wants the notice to be grammatically clean, unambiguous to a first-time reader, and firm but polite. Two staff members disagree: one says the sentence is acceptable because 'customers will understand it anyway'; the other wants the entire exception rewritten on a separate line. You have twenty minutes before the notice is printed, and the manager has asked you to settle the wording yourself rather than send it back for another round.
1. Identify at least three distinct grammatical or structural faults in the draft and give a corrected version of each, naming the rule you applied.
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1. Pronoun–antecedent disagreement. 'The charges ... it will apply' - charges is plural, so the pronoun must be plural. Correction: '...and they will apply...'. A notice that mismatches number signals carelessness about money, which is exactly the wrong signal.
2. Restrictive clause with 'which'. 'those which are deposited before this date' is better as 'those that are received before this date' - that marks the clause as defining which instruments are covered, not as an aside.
3. Two ideas run together with 'however'. In the draft, however is used as if it were a conjunction joining two independent clauses, producing a run-on and leaving the reader unsure whether the exception applies to the charge or to the date. Split the sentence.
4. Ambiguous trigger. 'Deposited before this date but presented afterwards' does not say whether the charge follows the deposit date or the presentation date. State it: the charge applies on the date of presentation, irrespective of when the cheque was lodged.
5. Wrong register. 'as per existing rules only' is bureaucratic and the word only is doing no work; replace with 'at the existing rates'.
2. Rewrite the notice in no more than 35 words, retaining the effective date, the scope of the charge, and the senior-citizen exception, and avoiding 'however' and 'as per'.
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Model rewrite (31 words):
'From 1 April 2025, revised cheque-clearing charges apply to all instruments presented on or after that date, including cheques lodged earlier. Senior citizens will continue to be charged at the existing rates.'
Why this version works:
- The trigger is explicit - 'presented on or after that date' settles the deposit-versus-presentation doubt in one phrase.
- 'Including cheques lodged earlier' keeps the anti-avoidance point without the clumsy 'deposited before ... but presented afterwards' construction.
- The exception is a full sentence, so it cannot be misread as qualifying the date.
- Active voice and one idea per sentence - a customer reading a notice at the counter scans rather than reads, so front-loading the date ('From 1 April 2025') does most of the work.
- 'Will continue to be charged' is deliberately neutral-to-polite: it tells senior citizens their position is unchanged rather than announcing a concession.
3. Your colleague wants the senior-citizen exception printed as a separate bold sentence. Decide whether to accept, and justify the choice in terms of how customers actually read counter notices.
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Accept, with one refinement. The exception should be a separate bold sentence under the main paragraph, not merely a separate sentence in the same block.
Reasoning:
- Legal exposure sits in the exception. If a senior citizen is overcharged because the exception appeared to modify only the date, the branch has created a complaint it cannot defend. Visual separation removes the ambiguity that syntax alone leaves in a 30-word notice.
- Scanner behaviour. Counter notices are read in two or three seconds, usually while someone is standing at the counter. Bold text is what gets picked up; running text is skipped. Putting the exception in the same paragraph effectively hides it from the reader it protects.
- Firmness without confrontation. 'Senior citizens will continue to be charged at the existing rates' as a standalone bold line reads as a statement of policy, not as an apology or a favour - which is the tone the manager asked for.
Refinement: keep the exception to one line and place it immediately below the main paragraph, not at the foot of the board, so it is seen together with the charge it qualifies. Do not use a footnote or asterisk; that forces the reader to hunt.