Proofreading a Welcome Letter Under Time Pressure
Second Lieutenant Zhou has written a welcome letter to 40 new recruits and asked a colleague to proofread it. The colleague marked five sentences but did not say what was wrong: (1) Neither the training schedule nor the duty roster have been finalized yet. (2) Not until next Monday we will announce the exact time. (3) The recruits, together with their squad leaders, is expected to assemble at 06:30. (4) Having checked all the equipment, the rifles were found in good condition. (5) We suggest that every soldier submits the form before Friday. Zhou must correct the letter before it goes on the board at 07:00. He knows the rules in general but misapplies them under time pressure, and he is unsure which of the five are genuine errors rather than stylistic preferences. His colleague's only comment was: 'Four of these are hard errors; one is a matter of emphasis, not grammar.'
1. Diagnose all five sentences: name the rule at issue, say whether it is a hard error, and give the corrected sentence.
Read the worked answer
(1) Neither … nor … have → has (borderline). With neither … nor, traditional formal agreement follows the nearer subject: roster is singular, so has been finalized. Modern usage often allows the plural when the coordination is felt as a whole. Corrected: Neither the training schedule nor the duty roster has been finalized yet.
(2) Inversion after a fronted negative adverbial (hard error). When not until … opens the sentence, the main clause inverts: Not until next Monday will we announce the exact time. Auxiliary before subject, exactly as after never or rarely.
(3) Parenthetical phrase does not change the subject (hard error). Together with their squad leaders is an aside; the subject is the recruits (plural), so are expected. Compare as well as and along with, which behave the same way.
(4) Dangling participle (hard error). The implied subject of having checked must be the subject of the main clause, but here it would be the rifles - rifles do not check equipment. Fix: Having checked all the equipment, the squad leaders found the rifles in good condition.
(5) Subjunctive after 'suggest that' (hard error). Suggest that + subject + base form: every soldier submit the form. British English also accepts should submit; submits is the indicative and is the error. Note that suggest meaning 'imply' takes the indicative - the trigger here is the 'recommend' sense.
2. Which of the five would a careful editor plausibly leave alone, and why is it different in kind from the other four?
Read the worked answer
Sentence (1) is the one the colleague means by 'a matter of emphasis, not grammar'.
The neither … nor construction sits between two competing principles: strict proximity agreement (nor the duty roster → singular has) and notional agreement (the coordination names two things, so the verb is felt as plural → have). Corpora and modern style guides accept both, especially when the second element is plural or when the sentence is long. So have is not ungrammatical; it is a defensible choice, and an editor may well leave it.
The other four are categorical:
- (2) is a fixed word-order rule - no native usage licenses Not until next Monday we will announce.
- (3) is a rule about what counts as the subject; together with cannot make a singular subject plural or a plural subject singular.
- (4) is a semantic rule: the participle's understood subject is determined by the main clause, so the sentence as written asserts something impossible.
- (5) is a mood selection licensed by the verb suggest in its recommend sense.
Test-taking lesson: when a proofreading item asks you to find errors, rank them by how categorical the rule is. Do not spend time re-litigating an item where two standard varieties disagree while a dangling participle sits two lines further down.
3. Sentence (4) can be repaired in two quite different ways. Give both, and say which suits a notice better and why.
Read the worked answer
Repair A - keep the participle, change the subject: Having checked all the equipment, the squad leaders found the rifles in good condition. The checker is now the subject, so the participle is attached correctly. Meaning: the squad leaders did the checking.
Repair B - drop the person, use a passive clause with 'after': After all the equipment had been checked, the rifles were found to be in good condition. The participle disappears, so there is nothing to dangle.
Which suits a notice?
- Repair B is usually better for a written notice. A notice reports a state of affairs, not who did what; the passive keeps the equipment and the rifles in focus and avoids naming individuals who may change before the letter is read.
- Repair A is better if the letter's purpose is to credit or instruct a specific group - for example, if the squad leaders are being told that the check is their responsibility.
A common wrong repair is Having checked all the equipment, it was found that …: it becomes the subject and still does not refer to a checker, so the dangling participle survives in a new costume. Also reject Being checked, the rifles …, which changes the aspect and implies a check in progress rather than a completed one.