Repairing a Policyholder Circular
A branch has drafted the following circular to policyholders:
"To all policyholders, This is to informed that with effect from 1 April the intimation of any claim must be made within 48 hours of the incident, failing which a delay of more than seven days will be viewed seriously and the claim may be rejected. Policyholders are advised to keep a copy of the FIR and the surveyor's report, who visits the site, ready. Neither the agent or the branch manager is authorized to promise settlement. The company, along with its surveyors, are committed to settle genuine claims promptly. Kindly note that the revised timelines is applicable to all policies except those which were issued before 2019."
The branch head is dissatisfied with both the grammar and the tone. The circular will be sent to about 12,000 policyholders, including many small shopkeepers, so clarity matters more than formal phrasing.
1. Identify four distinct grammatical or usage errors in the draft and correct each without changing the intended meaning.
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- 'This is to informed' is ungrammatical: after 'to' the base verb is needed. Correct to 'This is to inform'.
- 'Neither the agent or the branch manager' uses the wrong correlative conjunction. Correct to 'Neither the agent nor the branch manager'.
- 'The company, along with its surveyors, are committed' has a subject-verb agreement error. The subject is 'the company', so the verb should be 'is committed'. The phrase 'along with its surveyors' is parenthetical.
- 'The revised timelines is applicable' is wrong because 'timelines' is plural: 'the revised timelines are applicable'. A further correctable point is 'except those which were issued before 2019'; the relative clause is wordy and can be reduced to 'except those issued before 2019'.
2. Rewrite the sentence about the FIR and the surveyor's report so that the modifier and the reference are unambiguous. Explain what was wrong.
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Original: 'Policyholders are advised to keep a copy of the FIR and the surveyor's report, who visits the site, ready.' The clause 'who visits the site' is a misplaced modifier: it sits next to 'report', so it appears to describe the report, although the writer means the surveyor. The sentence is also tangled because 'ready' is separated from 'keep'.
Rewritten: 'Policyholders should keep ready a copy of the FIR and the surveyor's report. The surveyor will visit the site.' This separates the two ideas, attaches the visit to the surveyor, and removes the ambiguity about what must be kept ready.
3. The phrase 'will be viewed seriously' is vague and slightly threatening. Rewrite the first sentence to state the consequence precisely and in a customer-friendly tone.
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The original piles up vague warnings: 'delay of more than seven days will be viewed seriously' does not tell the customer what will actually happen. It also leaves open whether a delay of exactly seven days is safe. A precise version is:
'Please intimate any claim within 48 hours of the incident. If the delay exceeds seven days, we may be unable to process the claim normally and may have to reject it.'
This keeps the 48-hour requirement and the seven-day outer limit, states the consequence directly, and replaces the threatening passive 'will be viewed seriously' with a clear statement of what the company may do. It does not promise settlement, so it stays consistent with the rest of the circular.