The Vaccination Notice and the 6 p.m. Deadline
The District Magistrate's office must issue an English notice for a measles-rubella vaccination camp on 12 August. Three drafts lie on the table at 4 p.m. and the notice must reach the printer by 6 p.m.
Draft A reads: "All the parents are informed that one of the vaccination camp is organising at the PHC. The informations regarding the camp can be obtained from the ANM. Please revert back before 10 a.m. in the morning."
The senior superintendent has already circled "revert back" as correct because "it is the office style", and wants "less children" retained because "fewer sounds formal". Draft B corrects most errors but shifts the venue to the sub-centre, which is factually wrong. Draft C is grammatically clean, but runs to twelve lines of passive constructions and never names the PHC. The officer must pick a draft, defend the grammar choices in writing, and supply one clean opening sentence for the headline.
1. Identify the errors in Draft A and name the rule each one breaks.
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At least six faults are visible:
- "one of the vaccination camp" - one of must be followed by a plural countable noun: "one of the vaccination camps". The verb then agrees with "one", not with "camps".
- "is organising at the PHC" - the camp is the thing being organised, so a passive is required: "is being organised" or "will be held".
- "The informations" - information is uncountable; no plural, and no definite article is needed: "Information regarding the camp...".
- "revert back" - pleonasm, and revert means to return to a former state, not to reply; "reply" is the accurate word.
- "10 a.m. in the morning" - redundant; a.m. already fixes the half of the day.
- "less children" - less with a plural count noun is non-standard in formal writing; use "fewer children".
A lesser point: "All the parents" is better as "All parents" in a public notice, and the abbreviation PHC should be expanded once on first use.
2. The senior superintendent wants "revert back" and "less children" kept as office style. How do you respond, and what do you put on the file?
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Two different claims are being made: that house style exists, and that it overrides grammar. The first can be checked - if a written style sheet genuinely prescribes "revert back", it is still a style sheet with an error in it, and a public notice is the wrong place to preserve it. The second cannot be conceded: a notice issued in the district magistrate's name is read as a model of official English, and an error in it is quoted back at the office.
On "revert back", both the redundancy and the meaning problem are decisive; "please reply" is shorter and unambiguous. On "less/fewer", the count/non-count distinction is standard in formal written English even though speech is loosening it; a notice is formal written English. Practical course: mark up Draft A with the corrections, cite the rules in a short note, offer the superintendent the choice between "reply" and "respond" so that something of the preference survives, and place the note on file with the approved draft so the reasoning is auditable later.
3. Produce the final opening for the notice and state why Drafts B and C fail.
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Suggested opening: "A measles-rubella vaccination camp will be held at the Primary Health Centre on 12 August. Parents should contact the ANM for details and confirm before 10 a.m. on 11 August."
Draft B fails on accuracy, not on grammar: it relocates the camp to the sub-centre, and a factually wrong public notice is worse than a clumsy one - parents would be sent to the wrong place. Accuracy is the first test of official writing; elegance comes after.
Draft C fails on fitness for purpose. Twelve lines of passive constructions bury the two things a reader needs at a glance - venue and date. It also leaves "PHC" unexpanded, so a reader unfamiliar with health-department shorthand cannot act on it. The chosen sentence uses active voice, front-loads venue and date, expands the abbreviation, and keeps the deadline unambiguous by attaching the date to the time. This is the standard to defend on file: correct first, clear second, formal third.