Editing a Formal Email Under a Grammar-Checker
A candidate is editing a 150-word formal email to a scholarship office. Five segments are underlined. Segment 1: 'Each of the proposals have been reviewed.' Segment 2: 'The number of applicants have increased.' Segment 3: 'We would have sent the documents earlier, but the portal was closed.' Segment 4: 'The workshop was attended by less than twenty students.' Segment 5: 'Neither the transcript nor the references was uploaded.' The candidate has 8 minutes and must decide which items are errors, which are acceptable variants, and which depend on meaning. The email must remain formal; contractions are not allowed. The candidate's grammar checker flags segment 3 as 'wordy' but not wrong, and flags segment 5 as 'was' but suggests 'were'. The candidate must not change correct sentences simply because a checker disagrees.
1. For each segment, decide whether it is correct or incorrect and give the minimal fix. Explain any item where formal register changes the judgement.
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- Incorrect. 'Each of the proposals have been reviewed' -> 'Each of the proposals has been reviewed.' 'Each' is singular, and 'of the proposals' is a prepositional phrase, not the subject.
- Incorrect. 'The number of applicants have increased' -> 'The number of applicants has increased.' 'The number' is the subject. Contrast 'a number of applicants have increased', where 'a number of' means 'several' and takes a plural verb.
- Correct. 'We would have sent the documents earlier, but the portal was closed' is a past unreal intention with a real past reason. Do not change it just because the checker calls it wordy.
- Incorrect in formal exam usage. 'Less than twenty students' -> 'Fewer than twenty students.' 'Students' is a count noun; 'less' is for mass nouns. Many speakers use 'less' with count nouns informally, but the formal register and the exam's prescriptive expectation favour 'fewer'.
- Incorrect under the nearest-subject rule. 'Neither the transcript nor the references was uploaded' -> 'Neither the transcript nor the references were uploaded.' With 'neither ... nor', the verb agrees with the nearer subject, 'references'. Some usage guides accept a singular verb when the whole coordination is treated as one idea, but the formal exam context and the checker both point to 'were'.
2. Segment 3: why might a candidate mistakenly change it, and what rule protects the correct version?
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A candidate might see 'earlier' and assume the sentence needs past perfect: 'We had sent the documents earlier.' That would change the meaning. The original says the documents were not sent: 'would have sent' expresses an unfulfilled past intention, and the 'but' clause gives the real past reason ('the portal was closed').
The protective rule is: do not edit a sentence that is grammatically correct just because a checker flags style. The checker called segment 3 'wordy', not wrong. Wordiness is a style judgement; under an 8-minute editing task, style edits are lower priority than clear grammatical errors. The candidate should ask: does the sentence break a rule, or is it merely longer than necessary? If it breaks no rule and the meaning is clear, leave it.
A second protective rule is to test the conditional structure: 'would have + past participle' often pairs with a 'but' clause describing why the action did not happen. That structure is correct here. Changing it to 'had sent' would assert that the documents were sent, which contradicts the email's purpose.
3. If the candidate has 60 seconds left, which two fixes should they make and why?
Read the worked answer
Fix segments 1 and 2 first, because they are the same high-certainty rule: a singular subject with a prepositional phrase after it takes a singular verb. 'Each ... has' and 'The number ... has' are unambiguous in formal English, quick to edit, and likely to be tested as a pair.
If time remains after those two, fix segment 4 ('fewer than twenty students'), because the count-noun rule is also clear in a formal register.
Segment 5 is a lower priority under time pressure because some usage guides treat 'neither ... nor' with a singular verb when the coordination is viewed as a single idea. The formal nearest-subject rule points to 'were', but the candidate should not spend the last seconds on a contested item when two certain errors remain. Segment 3 should not be touched at all: it is correct.
The principle is to spend the final minute on high-certainty, high-frequency rules, not on the checker's most recent flag.