Editing the Inter-House Debate Notice
A Grade 10 student drafts a notice for the school noticeboard announcing an inter-house debate. The draft reads: “All students are hereby informed that an inter-house debate competition will be held on 20 August in the school auditorium. The competition will be held between the four houses. Each house must be send two speakers. The topic is ‘Social media harms teenagers more than it helps’. Interested students should gave their names to their house prefect by 12 August. For further informations, contact the undersigned. Attendance in the audience is compulsory for all students of classes nine and ten.” The teacher says the draft contains four errors of grammar or usage and one problem of tone. A classmate argues that because notices are formal, “hereby” and “undersigned” must be kept, and that adding “No excuses” at the end would make students take the deadline seriously. The notice goes to the printer at 4 p.m. and cannot be withdrawn once printed.
1. Identify four errors, name the rule each one breaks, and give the correction.
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- “must be send” - a modal takes the bare infinitive, so “must send”. The passive would need a past participle (“must be sent”), but the meaning here is active: houses do the sending.
- “should gave” - after a modal the base form is required: “should give”. The past tense has no place after should.
- “informations” - information is uncountable in English and has no plural: “For further information”. A countable alternative would be “for further details”.
- “between the four houses” - between is for two parties; with four, use among: “among the four houses”.
A fifth, softer point is usage rather than grammar: “Attendance in the audience” is awkward; “Attendance at the event” or simply “Attendance is compulsory” reads better. The teacher asked for four, so the first four are the required answers, but noting the fifth shows control of register rather than rule-spotting alone.
2. Rewrite the notice in 50–70 words, keeping the register appropriate for a school noticeboard.
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NOTICE - 8 August
An inter-house debate will be held in the school auditorium on 20 August. Each house must send two speakers. The topic is “Social media harms teenagers more than it helps”. Interested students should give their names to their house prefect by 12 August. Attendance is compulsory for all students of Classes Nine and Ten.
Signed Head of the Debating Club
The rewrite keeps every fact - date, venue, topic, quota, deadline, attendance rule - in about 60 words, and changes three things. Passive and legalistic phrasing becomes active (“must send”, “should give”). The opening “All students are hereby informed” disappears, because a noticeboard notice already addresses all students. “The undersigned” becomes a named signature block, which is what the word actually requires. Nothing essential is lost, and the shortest version is the one most likely to be read.
3. Evaluate the classmate's two claims about “hereby”, “undersigned” and “No excuses”.
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Both claims are wrong, but for different reasons.
“Hereby” and “undersigned” are not markers of formality; they are legal archaisms copied from circulars. “Undersigned” only works if there is a signature at the foot of the page, and the draft has none, so the word points at nothing. “Hereby” adds no information that the noticeboard context does not already supply. Formality in a school notice comes from completeness, impersonal tone and clear deadlines - not from old-fashioned vocabulary. A notice can be entirely formal and still say “contact the club secretary”.
“No excuses” is not formality at all; it is aggression aimed at the reader. It threatens without stating a consequence, which is the worst of both worlds: rude and unenforceable. If the deadline needs force, the notice should state the rule and its effect factually - “Names received after 12 August cannot be entered” - which is firm, unambiguous and defensible when a student complains. The classmate has confused severity with authority.