The newsletter draft that fails the plain-language guide
You are a Year 3 teacher at Riverton Primary, and the fortnightly parent newsletter is due tomorrow. Your draft includes three sentences the principal has flagged under the school's new plain-language style guide, which requires active voice, sentences of no more than 25 words, and no pronoun with an unclear referent. Sentence 1: 'Students who have not returned their permission note for the swimming program by Friday will be unable to attend, which parents have said is disappointing.' Sentence 2: 'The Year 3 team met with Mrs Alvarez about the assessment schedule, and they decided to change it.' Sentence 3: 'Having reviewed the latest data, the results were concerning.' The newsletter goes to 480 families, about a third of whom speak a language other than English at home. The principal wants the swimming note deadline to be unambiguous and does not want the school to appear to be blaming families.
1. Sentence 2 contains two pronouns whose referents are unclear. Identify them, explain the ambiguity each creates for a parent reading at home, and rewrite the sentence so the meaning is unambiguous.
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The two pronouns are 'they' and 'it'. 'They' could refer to the Year 3 team, to Mrs Alvarez, or to the team and Mrs Alvarez together; 'it' could refer to the assessment schedule or to the meeting itself. A parent was not in the room, so there is no shared context to resolve either one. The style guide's ban on unclear pronouns matters more than usual here because about a third of families read English as an additional language and cannot rely on quick inference from context. One fix: 'The Year 3 team met with Mrs Alvarez about the assessment schedule. The team decided to change the schedule.' Repeating the noun is slightly more wordy but removes the guesswork, and splitting the sentence also keeps each part well under the 25-word limit.
2. Sentence 1 is grammatically complete but still fails the principal's brief. Explain what 'which' refers to, why the sentence risks sounding blaming, and rewrite it so the deadline is unambiguous and the tone is neutral.
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'Which' is intended to refer to the consequence of not attending, but grammatically it attaches to the whole preceding clause, and a reader could think it refers to the note, to Friday, or to the swimming program. The sentence also leads with the negative outcome and reports that 'parents have said' it is disappointing without naming any parents. That unnamed appeal reads as pressure and subtly blames families who have not yet returned the note. A clearer version: 'Please return your child's swimming permission note by Friday so they can take part. Students without a returned note cannot attend.' This puts the requested action first, uses 'please' to set a cooperative tone, states the consequence as a fact rather than a complaint, and avoids attributing opinions to unnamed parents.
3. Sentence 3, 'Having reviewed the latest data, the results were concerning', contains a dangling modifier. Explain the error and give two corrected versions with different emphases.
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The opening participle 'Having reviewed the latest data' needs a subject that actually did the reviewing, but the subject of the main clause is 'the results'. Results cannot review data, so the modifier dangles and the sentence is illogical. Version 1 keeps the focus on staff action: 'After reviewing the latest data, the Year 3 team found some results concerning.' Version 2 keeps the focus on the data: 'The latest data show some concerning results.' The choice depends on the newsletter's purpose: if the principal wants to show that teachers are monitoring progress, Version 1 is better; if the point is simply to report a finding, Version 2 is shorter and more direct, and it also avoids implying that the data reviewed themselves.