The Newsletter Editors' Disagreement
Ms. Alleyne's Grade 6 class is producing a one-page newsletter before Friday's parents' meeting. Four pupils act as editors, every item must be 60 words or fewer, and the final copy goes to the printer at 2:00 p.m. During proofreading the editors flag three sentences and cannot agree on them:
(a) The basket of mangoes were left beside the gate. (b) Neither the captain nor the players was ready when the whistle blew. (c) Between you and I, the plan should stay secret until Monday.
A fourth sentence is also under review: Walking to the shop, the rain soaked Ravi's shirt. The editors have 20 minutes before the bell. Ms. Alleyne asks them to write a short note on each sentence explaining what is wrong and why, so that the younger pupils reading the newsletter can learn from it.
1. For each of (a), (b) and (c), decide whether the sentence is correct as written. Where it is not, give the corrected sentence and state the rule in one sentence that a Grade 4 pupil could understand.
Read the worked answer
(a) Incorrect. Corrected: The basket of mangoes was left beside the gate. Reasoning: the subject is basket, which is singular. of mangoes is a prepositional phrase sitting between the subject and its verb and cannot change the verb's number. Pupil-friendly rule: find the doer first, then ignore the words in between.
(b) Incorrect as written. Corrected: Neither the captain nor the players were ready when the whistle blew. Reasoning: with neither ... nor, the verb agrees with whichever subject is nearer to it. Here the nearer subject is players (plural), so the verb must be were. Reversed, the sentence would take a singular verb: Neither the players nor the captain was ready.
(c) Incorrect. Corrected: Between you and me, the plan should stay secret until Monday. Reasoning: between is a preposition, and every pronoun after a preposition takes the object form (me, him, her, us, them). The subject form I sounds more formal but is wrong here. Pupil-friendly rule: take away 'you and' and listen - you would never say 'between I'.
2. Revise the Ravi sentence in two different ways - one that keeps 'Walking to the shop' at the front and one that reorders the sentence. Say which version you would print and why.
Read the worked answer
Version 1 (front kept): Walking to the shop, Ravi had his shirt soaked by the rain. The opening phrase is now attached to Ravi, the person actually doing the walking, so nothing dangles.
Version 2 (reordered): As Ravi walked to the shop, the rain soaked his shirt. Here the walking is placed in its own clause with its own subject, so the reader cannot misattach it.
Judgement: in the original, the phrase Walking to the shop is left without a subject of its own, so the nearest available subject is the rain - producing the absurd picture of rain going for a walk. This is a dangling modifier, not a small slip, because it changes what the sentence says. I would print Version 2. It is the plainer of the two for younger readers and it names the actor directly; Version 1 is grammatical but had his shirt soaked is slightly clumsy for a school newsletter. Note that both revisions keep the original meaning, which a revision that drops the walking altogether would not.
3. One editor argues that (b) should read 'were' because 'players' is the word closest to the verb, and another says the sentence is already right. Who is right, and what does the disagreement show about how the neither ... nor rule works?
Read the worked answer
The first editor is right, and their reason is also right. With neither ... nor, the verb agrees with the subject that sits nearer to it. In Neither the captain nor the players ..., players is nearer and is plural, so the verb must be were. The second editor is wrong, but the mistake is worth naming: they may be treating neither as the only subject, which would give a singular verb - true only when the second element is also singular (Neither the captain nor the coach was ready).
What the disagreement shows: the rule is not 'neither always takes a singular verb' and it is not 'the first subject always controls the verb'. It is positional. A reliable editing routine follows from this: locate both subjects, check whether they differ in number, and then look at the one immediately before the verb. Where the two subjects are both singular or both plural, the question does not arise at all, which is why the rule is easy to misstate.