Grant Report: Four Flagged Sentences
A neighborhood nonprofit has drafted its year-end grant report, and the board has flagged four sentences before submission. The draft currently reads: 'The after-school program is comprised of three parts: tutoring, attendance coaching, and a family hotline.' 'Survey data inferred that attendance would rise once transport was provided.' 'The new east-side site has become notorious for its hot meals and homework help.' 'Volunteer hours were shared between the three sites.' The board chair, a retired copy editor, insists that two of these sentences contain outright errors and two contain choices that are defensible but weak. The grant deadline is Friday, and the report will be read by reviewers who score clarity and precision. The board must decide which sentences to change, which to leave, and how to explain each decision in the minutes so that next year's writers do not repeat the same problems.
1. Evaluate 'The after-school program is comprised of three parts.' Is this an error, a weak choice, or acceptable? Give a rewrite and your reasoning.
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Rewrite: 'The after-school program comprises three parts...' or 'is composed of three parts.' In edited English, comprise takes a direct object and means 'to include'; 'is comprised of' reverses the subject-object relationship and is widely criticized, though it is common in speech. Because these reviewers score precision, the safer edit is 'comprises' or 'is composed of.' Note that the colon is correct: it follows a complete clause and introduces a list. The chair is right that this is a genuine error by strict standards, but it is the weakest of the four - a usage flag rather than a misunderstanding, and no reviewer will misread the program's structure.
2. Evaluate 'Survey data inferred that attendance would rise' and 'has become notorious for its hot meals and homework help.' Fix both and explain what kind of error each is.
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'Survey data inferred' reverses the direction of the verb: data imply or suggest; people infer, meaning they draw a conclusion. Rewrite: 'Survey data suggested that attendance would rise...' or 'We inferred from survey data that...' 'Notorious' carries a negative connotation - famous for something bad - so applying it to hot meals and homework help is a connotation error, not a grammar error. Rewrite: 'has become known for' or 'notable for.' These are the two strongest fixes, because a reader could actively misread the meaning: 'inferred' misassigns who is reasoning, and 'notorious' hints at scandal. Meaning and connotation errors damage credibility with grant reviewers even when the grammar is clean.
3. Evaluate 'Volunteer hours were shared between the three sites.' Should the board change it, and how should the minutes characterise the change?
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This is the weakest flag. The traditional rule is between for two things and among for three or more, which supports 'among the three sites.' But 'between' is defensible when each pair is considered individually (hours split between site A and site B, then with site C), so this is a soft convention, not an error. Separately, 'were shared between' is passive and hides who did the sharing; 'the three sites shared volunteer hours' is tighter. Recommendation: change it if space allows, but do not record it in the minutes as a rule violation. Present the two real problems as the 'comprised of' usage question and the 'inferred'/'notorious' meaning problems, so next year's writers learn to rank hard errors above stylistic preferences.