Repairing a Report Paragraph Without Changing the Facts
An officer submitted this paragraph: "After observing the vehicle drift over the fog line, a stop was initiated at 0204. Neither of the two officers who arrived as backup were aware the vehicle had been reported stolen. Each of the three occupants were asked to keep their hands visible. Laying on the rear seat was a backpack containing a digital scale. The driver said he had borrowed the car from a friend, and he was asked to step outside. There were less occupants than seat belts."
1. Identify each grammatical or usage error in the paragraph, name the rule involved, and give the corrected form.
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1. Dangling modifier. "After observing the vehicle drift... a stop was initiated." The opening phrase modifies whoever observed the drift, but the subject of the main clause is "a stop," and a stop cannot observe anything. → After I observed the vehicle drift over the fog line, I initiated a stop at 0204.
2. Subject-verb agreement with "neither." "Neither of the two officers ... were aware." Neither is singular; "of the two officers" is a prepositional phrase and does not control the verb. → Neither of the two officers ... was aware.
3. Subject-verb agreement with "each." "Each of the three occupants were asked." Same rule: each is singular. → Each of the three occupants was asked.
4. Lie/lay. "Laying on the rear seat was a backpack." Lay is transitive and needs an object; here the backpack is resting, not placing anything. → Lying on the rear seat was a backpack.
5. Ambiguous pronoun. "The driver said he had borrowed the car from a friend, and he was asked to step outside." The first he could refer to the driver or the friend; the second is unattached to any stated actor. → The driver said he had borrowed the car from a friend. I then asked the driver to step outside.
6. Fewer/less. Occupants are countable. → There were fewer occupants than seat belts.
2. Rewrite the paragraph in three to four sentences, fixing every error while preserving all of the original facts and none of the original ambiguity.
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After I observed the vehicle drift over the fog line, I initiated a stop at 0204. Neither of the two officers who arrived as backup was aware the vehicle had been reported stolen. I asked each of the three occupants to keep his or her hands visible. A backpack containing a digital scale was lying on the rear seat. The driver said he had borrowed the car from a friend, and I then asked the driver to step outside; there were fewer occupants than seat belts.
Checks applied: (a) every verb agrees with a clearly identified singular subject; (b) the observing actor is named, so the opening phrase has something to attach to; (c) lying replaces laying; (d) the driver is named twice rather than referred to as "he," since a second male (the friend) is now in the paragraph; (e) fewer with a count noun.
3. Explain why "lying" is correct in this paragraph, and then write one sentence in which "laying" would be correct.
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Why "lying" here: lie is intransitive - a thing lies (rests) somewhere, with no object. Lay is transitive - someone lays something down, and the something must appear as the object. In the sentence, the backpack is resting on the seat and nothing is being placed, so the intransitive form is required. The -ing form of lie is lying; note that lying is also the -ing form of the verb to lie meaning to tell a falsehood, so the surrounding context has to disambiguate - here "on the rear seat" does that work.
A correct use of "laying": The officer was laying the evidence bags on the hood of the patrol car when the tow truck arrived.
Test to apply under time pressure: if you can ask "laying what?" and the sentence answers it, use laying. If nothing is being placed, use lying.