Correcting a Civics Paragraph’s Conventions

Two agreement errors need correction. First, “The city council have approved” should be “The city council has approved”: in American English, “council” is a collective noun treated as singular here, and the style sheet confirms that convention. Second, “Residents who puts” should be “Residents who put”: the relative pronoun “who” refers to the plural “Residents,” so the verb must be plural. The corrected sentences read: “The city council has approved a new recycling program” and “Residents who put bins out late will be fined.”

The comma splice is “program, it will begin.” Two independent clauses cannot be joined by only a comma. The cleanest fix is a period: “The city council has approved a new recycling program. It will begin in March.” A semicolon would also work, but a period is clearer for a short civics paragraph. A third option, “program, which will begin in March,” turns the second clause into a relative clause and is also correct. The student should avoid adding “and” unless the two ideas are meant as a list; the start date is a detail, so subordination or a period is stronger.

The error is “its expected.” Here the sentence needs the contraction “it is” (or “it’s”), not the possessive “its.” In formal writing, expand the contraction: “it is expected to cut landfill use by 30%.” The word “its” can only modify a noun (as in “its goal”), so it cannot introduce a new clause. The corrected sentence keeps the same meaning and formal tone while observing the style sheet’s distinction between “its” and “it’s.”