Collective Nouns, 'Each', 'None' and the That/Which Choice in a Draft Memo
You are the junior policy analyst in a federal division, and your manager has asked you to review a two-page draft memo before it goes to the Executive Committee on 14 March. The memo concerns a new records-retention schedule and will be circulated to 40 employees in three branches. Your manager has flagged four sentences for a grammar check but has not said what, if anything, is wrong with them: 1. 'None of the recommendations submitted by the regional offices were adopted.' 2. 'The Committee have decided to postpone its review until the fall.' 3. 'Each of the three branches have submitted their own template.' 4. 'The report, that was tabled in June, recommends a six-year retention period.' The division follows a style guide that treats collective nouns as singular when they act as a unit. Your manager wants brief written justifications, not just corrections, because the memo will be used as a training example.
1. For sentences 2 and 3, state whether each is acceptable and, if not, correct it. Explain the agreement principle that decides each case.
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Sentence 2 is not acceptable in Canadian federal usage. 'The Committee have decided' should be 'The Committee has decided.' The principle is that a collective noun acting as a single unit takes a singular verb and a singular pronoun. The draft already says 'its review', so 'have' is internally inconsistent as well as contrary to the style guide. If the writer meant that individual members voted separately, the sentence would have to be recast ('Members of the Committee have decided...'); a collective noun followed by a singular pronoun signals unit treatment.
Sentence 3 has a clear error: 'Each ... have submitted' should be 'Each ... has submitted'. 'Each' is a singular indefinite pronoun and takes a singular verb regardless of the plural noun in the prepositional phrase that follows it. 'Their' as a gender-neutral singular pronoun is widely accepted and the guide permits it; if strict formal style is required, 'its' is the alternative, but the verb, not the pronoun, is the defect. The contrast with sentence 2 is the teaching point: collective-noun agreement depends on whether the group acts as a unit, whereas 'each' is grammatically singular no matter what follows.
2. Sentence 1: is 'were adopted' an error? Justify your answer with reference to the subject and to formal versus informal usage.
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Sentence 1 is acceptable as written; 'were adopted' is not an error. 'None' is an indefinite pronoun that can take either a singular or a plural verb. When 'none of' is followed by a plural noun and the sense is 'not any of them', plural agreement is standard and is preferred by much contemporary guidance, including plain-language advice. Singular agreement ('was adopted') is also defensible in formal writing that stresses 'not one'. Because both are defensible, the item is a judgment call rather than a rule violation, and the real risk is inconsistency within one document.
The practical advice is to check the division's style guide. If it mandates singular 'none', 'was' is required; absent such a rule, do not mark the sentence wrong on the basis of number alone. What you should flag is a document that uses 'none ... were' in one paragraph and 'none ... was' in the next. Consistency is the enforceable standard here; the number choice itself is not.
3. Sentence 4: explain the choice between 'that' and 'which' and rewrite the sentence if necessary.
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'That' cannot introduce a non-restrictive (non-defining) clause. The clause 'that was tabled in June' is set off by commas and adds parenthetical information about a specific report, so the correct relative pronoun is 'which'. Rewrite: 'The report, which was tabled in June, recommends a six-year retention period.'
The underlying rule pairs punctuation with pronoun choice. Commas plus 'which' signal extra information that could be removed without changing which report is meant. No commas plus 'that' signal identifying information: 'The report that was tabled in June recommends...' would imply that another report exists and does not recommend it. Since the writer has already supplied the commas, the only possible fix is 'which'; alternatively, if the restrictive meaning was intended, remove the commas and keep 'that'. The choice is therefore driven by meaning, not by a preference for one word over the other.