The Grant Draft with Four Faults
You are proofreading a 250-word grant narrative for a community arts council before a 5 p.m. deadline. The rubric awards 10 points for "clarity and command of standard written English" and penalises sentence-level errors. Your manager asks you to correct only unambiguous errors and to flag anything that could change the author's meaning. Four sentences are marked: (1) "The workshop series, which ran for six weeks, were attended by 48 residents." (2) "Having collected feedback from participants, the schedule was revised." (3) "The project was completed on time, the budget was not exceeded." (4) "The team spent fewer time on promotion than expected." The author is on a train and cannot be reached before the deadline. The narrative also says "None of the participants were dissatisfied," which you know is disputed usage.
1. Diagnose each marked sentence, name the error, and give a corrected version.
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(1) Subject–verb agreement. The grammatical subject is "series," which is singular, so the verb should be "was": "The workshop series, which ran for six weeks, was attended by 48 residents."
(2) Dangling modifier. "Having collected feedback" grammatically modifies "the schedule," implying the schedule collected feedback. Rewrite: "After the team collected feedback from participants, the schedule was revised."
(3) Comma splice. Two independent clauses are joined by only a comma. Use a semicolon or a conjunction: "The project was completed on time; the budget was not exceeded."
(4) Count versus mass noun. "Time" is a mass noun in this sense, so use "less": "The team spent less time on promotion than expected."
(5) "None of the participants were dissatisfied" is disputed, not clearly wrong. Both singular and plural agreement are defensible; flag it rather than changing it.
2. Which correction, if any, should you make without author approval, and which should you flag? Explain using the concept of authorial intent and risk.
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Make (1), (2), and (4) silently: each has one standard fix and no plausible change of meaning. For (3), the fix is also standard, but choose "and" if the author intends a positive contrast and a semicolon if the tone should stay neutral. That is a style choice, not an error, so make the minimal change and tell the author. For (5), do not change it: "none were" is acceptable in formal prose, and changing it could imply the author meant "not one was," which is a different emphasis. The rubric rewards command of standard English, but the manager's instruction is to flag meaning-changing edits. Authorial intent outranks a contested rule. Record the changes in a short note so the author can reverse any choice after the deadline.
3. Rewrite sentence 3 in two ways that preserve the intended contrast, and explain the rhetorical difference.
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Version A (neutral): "The project was completed on time; the budget was not exceeded." Version B (additive): "The project was completed on time, and the budget was not exceeded." The semicolon presents two balanced facts and keeps them at equal weight; "and" suggests joint achievement and a slightly warmer tone. Neither is wrong. The choice depends on whether the grant narrative wants to emphasise cost discipline as a separate achievement or simply list two outcomes in a single flow. In a rubric that rewards clarity, either version removes the comma splice; the semicolon is the safer minimal edit because it changes punctuation only, not wording.