Copyediting a Family Handbook Under a Formal Style Guide
A middle school publishes a family handbook. The assistant principal asks you to copyedit six sentences before printing 1,200 copies. The house style is formal Standard American English, consistent singular/plural treatment of data, and no singular they. Sentences: (1) 'The committee of teachers and administrators have approved the new late-arrival policy.' (2) 'Neither the principal nor the teachers was available for comment.' (3) 'Each student must bring their signed form to the office.' (4) 'The data from the fall survey shows that most families prefer evening conferences.' (5) 'The teacher who the parents contacted responded within a day.' (6) 'The number of absences in September were higher than in October.' The principal wants minimal changes and asks you to flag any sentence where correctness depends on meaning or style rather than a fixed rule.
1. Revise sentences (1), (2), and (6) for subject-verb agreement. For each, explain why the verb form is correct, and identify any sentence where the stated house style, not grammar alone, determines the choice.
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(1) The committee of teachers and administrators has approved the new late-arrival policy. The headword is committee, a singular collective noun; the prepositional phrase of teachers and administrators does not create a compound subject. The approval is a single official action, so singular is the natural reading. In British usage, or when members act individually, have can be defended, but the house style is formal American and the action is unitary, so has is the minimal correct edit.
(2) Neither the principal nor the teachers were available for comment. With neither...nor, standard formal American usage often applies the nearest-subject rule: the verb agrees with teachers, so were. Some edited English prefers was by treating the whole neither/nor pair as singular, but that is not the dominant rule and would sound odd here. Because house style is formal, nearest-subject is defensible; flag that a style guide could prefer otherwise.
(6) The number of absences in September was higher than in October. The subject is the number, singular, not absences. Compare a number of absences were higher, where a number of is plural. No meaning-based ambiguity; this is a fixed rule. Sentence (1) is the one where a defensible British or notional alternative exists, but house style resolves it.
2. Sentence (3) reads 'Each student must bring their signed form to the office.' The house style forbids singular they. Choose a revision you would make for a family handbook, and explain the trade-off between grammatical formality, inclusiveness, and readability.
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The cleanest handbook revision is Each student must bring a signed form to the office. This removes the possessive pronoun entirely, so it avoids singular they without adding clunky alternatives. It preserves the individual obligation and reads naturally at a family audience's reading level.
A second option is All students must bring their signed forms to the office. This is grammatical and inclusive, but it shifts emphasis from each individual student to the group. A third option, Each student must bring his or her signed form, is formally singular but is wordier and assumes a gender binary; it is less readable and less inclusive. Given a no-singular-they style guide and a family handbook, the pronoun-free singular is the best compromise: it is formal, inclusive by omission, and short.
3. Sentence (5) reads 'The teacher who the parents contacted responded within a day.' Decide whether 'who' should be 'whom' under the stated house style, and explain the test you used. If you would recast instead, give the recast and say why.
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Under formal written American English, change who to whom: The teacher whom the parents contacted responded within a day. The test is to substitute a personal pronoun for the relative pronoun: the parents contacted him or her, not he or she. The missing element is the object of contacted, so the objective form whom is required in formal style. Who is common in informal speech, but the handbook's house style is formal.
A recast is possible: The teacher contacted by the parents responded within a day. This avoids the who/whom choice and is formal, but it is passive and slightly less direct. For minimal changes, whom is better. The key is not memorizing a label but testing the pronoun's function inside the relative clause.