The Number, the Students, and the Verb
A student editor is checking a notice for the school's English Club. The notice will be printed and posted on the club board. The writer has asked for a check of grammar only, not style. The draft contains this sentence:
'The number of students who has signed up for the speech contest have increased, and each of the participants are required to submit a script by Friday.'
The editor knows that some changes would alter the writer's intended meaning and should be avoided. The club adviser has said that the contest is still open for sign-ups, but that scripts are due Friday for everyone currently registered. The editor must decide what to correct, what to leave, and how to explain the correction to a writer who is worried about sounding 'too formal.' The notice is 40 words long, and the editor has room for a corrected version of the same length.
1. Identify every grammatical error in the quoted sentence and give a corrected version that preserves the writer's meaning.
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Three errors cluster around agreement. (1) 'who has signed up' - the relative pronoun refers to 'students,' plural, so it should be 'who have signed up.' (2) 'The number ... have increased' - the subject is 'the number,' singular, so 'has increased.' (3) 'each of the participants are required' - 'each' is singular, so 'is required.' Corrected: 'The number of students who have signed up for the speech contest has increased, and each of the participants is required to submit a script by Friday.' The meaning is unchanged: the count rose, and every registered participant owes a script. 'By Friday' stays because the adviser confirmed Friday for everyone currently registered. Do not change 'students' to 'student': the relative clause clearly refers to multiple students.
2. The writer proposes changing 'The number of students' to 'A lot of students' to sound less formal. Does that fix the grammar, and what happens to the sentence's meaning?
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It fixes one problem but creates another. 'A lot of students who have signed up ... have increased' is grammatically plural, but it says the students increased, not the number. The original claim is about a rising count; 'a lot of students have signed up' would report a large total, not an increase. If the writer wants informality, 'More students have signed up for the speech contest than before' is grammatical and keeps the comparison, though it drops the explicit 'number.' The adviser's fact - sign-ups are still open - means the writer should not imply a final total. Informality is not the editor's task here; the writer asked for grammar only, and a meaning-changing rewrite should be flagged rather than silently made.
3. Explain why 'each of the participants are' is wrong, and suggest a revision that avoids the singular-plural awkwardness without changing the rule.
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'Each' is a singular indefinite pronoun, so it takes a singular verb: 'each ... is required.' The plural 'participants' sits inside the prepositional phrase 'of the participants' and does not control the verb. The same logic explains 'The number ... has,' where 'of students' is also a phrase, not the subject. If the writer finds 'each ... is' stiff, a full rewrite can avoid the construction: 'All participants must submit a script by Friday.' That is grammatical because 'all participants' is plural and takes 'must.' It also states the requirement directly. The editor should not accept 'each ... are' merely because it sounds natural in speech; agreement is the one thing the writer asked to have checked.