Improve bounty notification “You must award it to an answer within 24 hours.” when there are no answers

Question

When the 7-day period of one of your bounties ends, you get the following message:

Your bounty on question [question title] is completed. You must award it to an answer within 24 hours.

_{(emphasis mine)}

However, in this case, there was no answer to award it to. In theory, it's possible somebody posts one in the 24 hour grace period, but wouldn't it better to not include the second sentence? Or perhaps rewrite the entire message as something like

Your bounty on question [question title] is completed but did not get an answer.

(Or perhaps even invite posting another bounty.)

Answer 1

As Glorfindel correctly pointed out, an answer could be posted within that 24-hour grace period, and the bounty offerer could award their bounty with less than an hour to spare.

How does the bounty system work?

During the grace period, there will be no indication in the questions lists (e.g. front page, bountied tab) that the question has a bounty, as confirmed here. However, answers posted during the grace period can still be awarded the bounty.

Further on

What happens if there's no answer after the bounty period?

If, after the end of the bounty period, a question has no answers, the bounty will expire and the reputation will disappear.

So it would be counterproductive and confusing to imply that the user will lose their reputation during the grace period. IMO, the bounty offerer needs to be reminded at the end:

"The grace period has expired but with no answers posted, the bounty cannot be awarded to anyone.”