Recruitment notice copy-edit: number agreement, deadline ambiguity and legal register
An assistant section officer is copy-editing a public notice for a state commission's recruitment test. The draft, prepared by a junior, contains these sentences: (1) 'The Commission have decided to conduct the written examination on 12 August 2025.' (2) 'Candidates are informed that they should submit their application form before the last date, otherwise their candidature will be cancelled.' (3) 'The number of candidates appeared in the examination was less than 50,000.' (4) 'The Commission comprises of five members.' (5) 'No candidate will be allowed to carry any objectionable item inside the examination hall.' The notice must be unambiguous, formal, and legally defensible; the commission's style sheet prefers active voice where the doer is known, avoids 'shall' except for legal obligations, and requires countable nouns to take 'fewer'. The last date is 25 July 2025, 5:00 p.m. A local newspaper has already quoted sentence (2) as saying candidates may submit 'before the last date' and inferred that applications on the last date are invalid. The officer must finalise the text.
1. Correct sentences (1), (3) and (4), and state the grammatical reason for each choice. Do not change any sentence that is already standard.
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(1) 'The Commission have decided' → 'The Commission has decided'. In formal institutional English the Commission acts as a single body, so the singular verb is standard. If the sentence emphasised individual members acting separately, 'have' could be defended, but a recruitment notice does not.
(3) 'The number of candidates appeared ... was less than 50,000' → 'The number of candidates who appeared ... was less than 50,000.' The relative clause 'who appeared' is needed; 'appeared' alone is a past participle and can imply 'candidates who were appeared'. Do not change 'less' to 'fewer' here: 'less than' modifies the number, and 'the number ... was less than 50,000' is standard. If rewritten as 'Fewer than 50,000 candidates appeared', then 'fewer' is correct because it modifies the countable plural 'candidates'.
(4) 'comprises of five members' → 'comprises five members' (or 'is composed of five members'). 'Comprise' means 'consist of'; the 'of' is redundant. 'Comprised of' is widely used but is not the preferred formal form.
2. Rewrite sentence (2) so that it is unambiguous about the last date and legally defensible if the portal fails for an hour before the deadline.
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Suggested rewrite: 'Applications must be submitted online on or before 25 July 2025, 5:00 p.m. Indian Standard Time. Applications received after the deadline will not be considered. Subject to the Commission's advertised power to extend a deadline, the Commission may extend the deadline by a notified order if it is satisfied that the portal was unavailable for reasons beyond the candidate's control.'
Why: 'before the last date' excludes the last date; 'on or before' includes it. 'Otherwise their candidature will be cancelled' is automatic and harsh; separate the rule (late applications will not be considered) from the discretionary relief (possible extension). Do not promise relief in every case; say 'may extend' and require a notified order. This protects the notice against a challenge based on a systemic portal failure while preserving the cut-off.
3. The style sheet says 'countable nouns take fewer'. Should the officer mechanically replace every 'less' in the notice? Explain with reference to sentence (3) and one other construction.
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No. The rule applies when 'less/fewer' directly modifies a noun: 'fewer candidates', 'less time'. It does not apply when 'less than' modifies a number, amount, or measurement: 'less than 50,000', 'less than three times the posts', 'less than 5:00 p.m.'
In sentence (3), 'the number ... was less than 50,000' is correct because the comparison is with the number, which is singular. Mechanical replacement produces 'the number ... was fewer than 50,000', which is awkward and not the preferred formal usage. By contrast, 'Fewer than 50,000 candidates appeared' is correct because 'fewer' modifies 'candidates'. The officer should apply the rule at the level of noun modification, not as a find-and-replace string operation, and should keep the notice internally consistent.