Finalising a Hindi Notice: Register, Redundancy and Shabd-Shuddhi
You are a Junior Assistant in the office of the District Basic Education Officer, Jhansi. A recruitment notice for 40 assistant-teacher posts must be dispatched to 300 schools within 45 minutes. The senior clerk's draft reads: 'समस्त अभ्यर्थीगण से निवेदन है कि वे अपने आप को दिनांक 12/08/2024 तक अनिवार्यतः उपस्थित होने की कृपा करें।' The same draft writes परिक्षा, अतिथी, सूचीत and कृप्या. The clerk insists nothing should change because 'this is how office Hindi is written'. A colleague argues that most readers will be rural candidates and the notice must be plain and unambiguous. You also notice the draft mixes a request (निवेदन है) with a command (कृपा करें) and uses a purely numeric date that different readers may interpret differently. The officer asks you to produce one clean version and to record, in two lines, why each change was made, so that the file shows the reasoning behind the final text.
1. Rewrite the clerk's sentence as one standard official-Hindi sentence, and justify every change you make (redundancy, case marker, verb form, date format).
Read the worked answer
A defensible rewrite is: 'सभी अभ्यर्थियों से अनुरोध है कि वे 12 अगस्त 2024 तक कार्यालय में स्वयं उपस्थित हों।'
Reasoning, change by change:
- 'समस्त अभ्यर्थीगण' carries plurality twice (समस्त + गण). Retain one: 'सभी अभ्यर्थी' or 'समस्त अभ्यर्थी'.
- 'अपने आप को उपस्थित होना' is wrong idiom. 'अपने आप' means of one's own accord, automatically; the intended sense is 'in person', which is स्वयं. So 'स्वयं उपस्थित हों'.
- 'उपस्थित होने की कृपा करें' stacks a request (निवेदन है) on a courtesy command (कृपा करें). One directive is enough: अनुरोध है कि ... उपस्थित हों.
- 'अनिवार्यतः' is grammatical but adverbial tatsam; the sentence already carries obligation through the request plus the deadline, so it can be dropped without losing meaning.
- '12/08/2024' is ambiguous across conventions; in Hindi official drafting the month is written in words: '12 अगस्त 2024'. A place ('कार्यालय में') is added because 'उपस्थित होना' without a location is incomplete for a reader who does not know the venue.
2. Of परिक्षा, अतिथी, सूचीत, कृप्या, which are genuine spelling errors? Give the correct form and the reason. Also state whether 'समस्त' is a spelling error.
Read the worked answer
All four listed forms are errors, but for different reasons:
- परिक्षा → परीक्षा. The vowel is दीर्घ ई and the conjunct is क्ष, not क + ष separately.
- अतिथी → अतिथि. The final vowel is ह्रस्व इ; the दीर्घ ई form is a common over-correction.
- सूचीत → सूचित. Formed from the root सूच् with the participial suffix; the medial vowel is ह्रस्व इ, not ई.
- कृप्या → कृपया. The standard form has no व्यंजन-संयोग here; कृप्या is a hypercorrect spelling seen in notices but not accepted.
'समस्त' is not a spelling error at all; it is a valid word. The problem in the draft is stylistic redundancy with गण, not orthography. Distinguishing a wrong spelling from a clumsy collocation matters: only the first four should be sent to the typist as corrections, while 'समस्त अभ्यर्थीगण' is fixed at the drafting level. Over-correcting valid words is itself an error in an office note.
3. Choose between 'अनिवार्यतः उपस्थित हों' and 'उपस्थित होना अनिवार्य है' for this notice. Which do you print, and why?
Read the worked answer
Both are grammatical, so the choice is judged on reader load, not on correctness.
- 'अनिवार्यतः उपस्थित हों' uses an adverbial tatsam form at the front of the clause; it reads as formal but asks the reader to hold an abstract adverb before reaching the verb.
- 'उपस्थित होना अनिवार्य है' is a nominal construction: the action comes first, the obligation second. For rural candidates reading a wall notice once, the second is easier to parse and harder to misread as optional.
Recommended printed line: 'सभी अभ्यर्थी 12 अगस्त 2024 तक कार्यालय में स्वयं उपस्थित हों - यह अनिवार्य है।' This separates the instruction from the consequence with a dash, keeps the obligation in a short second clause, and avoids the clerk's stacked courtesy formula. The impersonal 'यह अनिवार्य है' also avoids naming an enforcing officer, which is appropriate for a general notice. Official register tolerates tatsam vocabulary, but clarity for the actual readership outranks imitating the previous draft.