Editing the Prefect's Announcement
Tunde, a senior prefect, has drafted a 120-word notice for an inter-house debate. Three sentences are flagged by his teacher:
- 'The committee comprise of seven members, and neither the chairperson nor the secretary were present at the last meeting.'
- 'Due to the low turnout, the competition was postponed.'
- 'The number of students who has registered is higher than last year.' The teacher says the notice must be formal, concise and free of concord errors. Tunde also wants to replace 'comprise of' with a structure that fits formal school writing. He is unsure whether 'due to' is acceptable in the first sentence and whether 'the number of ... has' or 'have' is correct. The notice will be read aloud at assembly, so he also needs the subject-verb agreement to sound natural. He has 20 minutes before the bell.
1. Correct sentence 1 and explain the two concord rules involved.
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Corrected sentence: 'The committee comprises seven members, and neither the chairperson nor the secretary was present at the last meeting.'
Reasoning:
- Comprise is a transitive verb meaning 'consist of'. It takes a direct object, so 'comprise of' is wrong. Write 'comprises seven members' or, if you need 'of', use 'is composed of seven members'.
- With neither ... nor, the verb agrees with the nearer subject. The nearer subject is 'the secretary' (singular), so 'was' is correct, not 'were'.
- The first clause's subject is 'the committee', which is singular in this context, so 'comprises' is correct.
2. Decide whether sentence 2 should use 'due to' or 'owing to', and correct sentence 3 with an explanation.
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For a formal notice, 'Owing to the low turnout, the competition was postponed' is the safer choice. Traditional formal usage treats 'due to' as adjectival, meaning 'caused by', and 'owing to' as adverbial, meaning 'because of'. Modern usage often accepts 'due to' adverbially, but the teacher's demand for formal school writing makes 'owing to' the better judgement call.
Sentence 3 should read: 'The number of students who have registered is higher than last year.'
- The main subject is 'the number', which is singular, so the main verb is 'is'.
- The relative clause 'who have registered' refers to 'students' (plural), so 'have' is correct there.
- Contrast this with 'a number of students have registered', where 'a number of' is treated as plural.
3. Rewrite sentence 1 without using 'comprise' and keep the formal tone.
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One correct rewrite is: 'The committee consists of seven members, and neither the chairperson nor the secretary was present at the last meeting.'
Reasoning: 'Consists of' keeps the formal register and avoids the transitive-verb error in 'comprise of'. The concord in the second clause remains unchanged because 'neither ... nor' still takes the nearer subject 'the secretary', which is singular. Another acceptable version is 'The committee is made up of seven members ...', but 'is made up of' is slightly less formal than 'consists of' for a school notice. The rewrite must preserve both the membership count and the past-tense report of the last meeting.