A xerographic printing device, including a charging device having a shield. In some embodiments of the shield of the charging device in the xerographic printing device, three slots are provided with one slot in the upstream process direction and the other two slots sharing a common axis in downstream process direction and neither an overlap nor a gap existing between the ends of any of the slots in a longitudinal direction. In another embodiment, a plurality of holes are included in the shield. The charging device can be a corotron, a dicorotron, a scorotron, a discorotron, a pin corotron, a pin scorotron, or any other known or later developed charging device of that type.