Cover Letter: Three Sentence-Level Faults
A candidate has applied for a library assistant post and submitted this cover letter paragraph: 'Each of my previous supervisors have praised my accuracy and my patience with young readers. Having worked two years at a busy circulation desk, customer service has become second nature to me. I am organized, reliable, and I communicate well with people who are upset. Which is why I believe I would fit your branch.' The hiring committee meets on Monday; three members have already marked the paragraph as 'weak writing' but cannot agree on why. One member argues the first sentence is acceptable because 'supervisors' is plural and sits next to the verb. Another says the second sentence is fine because the meaning is obvious. The committee must give the candidate specific, teachable feedback tied to grammar rather than taste, and must decide whether every sentence needs revision or only some.
1. Rule on 'Each of my previous supervisors have praised my accuracy.' Supply the corrected sentence and answer the committee member who defends the original.
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The subject is 'each,' which is singular, so the verb must be 'has': 'Each of my previous supervisors has praised my accuracy and my patience with young readers.' 'Of my previous supervisors' is a prepositional phrase and cannot supply the subject; that is precisely why the plural noun beside the verb misleads the ear. The defending member is describing proximity, not grammar - a plural word sitting next to a verb does not make the verb plural. The teachable routine: locate the subject, delete the prepositional phrase, then choose the verb, and read the result aloud ('Each ... has praised'). The two objects remain parallel as written, so no further repair is needed.
2. Rule on 'Having worked two years at a busy circulation desk, customer service has become second nature to me.' Explain the fault and give two repairs.
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This is a dangling modifier. 'Having worked two years...' has no subject of its own; the implied worker must be the person who did the working, but the main clause makes 'customer service' the subject, so the sentence literally credits customer service with two years of desk experience. Repair one, put the real subject right after the comma: 'Having worked two years at a busy circulation desk, I have made customer service second nature.' Repair two, expand the phrase into a clause: 'Because I worked two years at a busy circulation desk, customer service has become second nature to me.' The member who says the meaning is obvious is right about intent and wrong about standard: obviousness is not the test, because a skimming reader can misassign the experience.
3. Rule on 'I am organized, reliable, and I communicate well' and 'Which is why I believe I would fit your branch.' Which faults must be fixed and which are matters of polish?
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The list breaks parallelism: two adjectives followed by a full clause. Fix it either way, just not both ways at once - three adjectives ('organized, reliable, and clear') or three clauses ('I organize my work, keep commitments, and communicate well'). 'Which is why I believe...' is a fragment: 'which' cannot launch an independent sentence in this construction. Fix it with 'That is why I believe...' or attach it to the previous sentence after a comma. Rank the repairs: the fragment is a hard error that any reader will notice and must be fixed; the parallelism is a clarity issue, worth fixing because lists are where readers judge care. The first two sentences also require correction, so only the fragment-plus-parallelism sentence is optional in part.