Repairing a Formal Notice with Four Errors
A class secretary writes this notice for the inter-house debate on 22 August at 9:00 a.m. in the school auditorium. Three teams will speak, and about 200 students will attend. Draft: 'Walking into the hall, the notice board was seen by us. Each of the teams have submitted their names. The debate will begin at 9:00 a.m., refreshments will be served after. If the team would have practised, they would win. Students are requested to keep silence during the debate.' The teacher says the notice is understandable but not acceptable for a formal school event. She asks you to fix only the two errors that most affect clarity or credibility, and to leave the rest for a second draft. She also wants one sentence rewritten in a formal register without changing its meaning.
1. Which two errors should be fixed first? Name each error, correct it, and explain why it outranks the others for a formal notice.
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Fix the dangling modifier and the subject–verb agreement. 'Walking into the hall, the notice board was seen by us' says the notice board was walking; rewrite as 'Walking into the hall, we saw the notice board' or, more formally, 'On entering the hall, we saw the notice board.' 'Each of the teams have' is wrong because 'each' is singular: 'Each of the teams has submitted its name list' (or 'the teams have'). These outrank the comma splice and the conditional because the first makes the actor ridiculous and the second is a basic agreement error that undermines the secretary's credibility. The comma splice ('9:00 a.m., refreshments...') is a punctuation problem but the meaning is clear; 'would have practised... would win' is a tense error that can be fixed in the second draft.
2. Rewrite the conditional sentence ('If the team would have practised, they would win') so that it expresses a past unreal condition. Then explain how the meaning changes if you use 'practises' instead.
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Past unreal: 'If the team had practised, it would have won.' This says the team did not practise and therefore did not win; 'had practised' marks the earlier action, and 'would have won' marks the unreal result. If you write 'If the team practises, it will win', you make a real future condition: the practising is still possible and the win is a predicted result. The original mixes a past unreal 'would have' with a present 'would win' and is not standard. In a notice, the safer choice is to avoid the conditional altogether unless the result is genuinely uncertain, because readers may not know whether the team has already lost.
3. The teacher wants one sentence in a formal register. Choose the last sentence and rewrite it, then justify your changes.
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Original: 'Students are requested to keep silence during the debate.' A more formal version is: 'Students are requested to remain silent throughout the debate.' 'Remain silent' is more formal than 'keep silence', which is unidiomatic in this context; 'throughout' is more precise than 'during' because it covers the whole event. I would not change 'are requested to' because it already has the impersonal, polite register suitable for a school notice. The rewrite keeps the same meaning and length while removing the awkward collocation, which is the kind of small edit that makes a notice sound credible.