The Ambiguous Late-Submission Notice
The Academic Integrity Office at a mid-sized university is finalising an email to 4,200 undergraduates about a revised late-submission rule. The draft reads: 'Students who submit assessed work after the published deadline without an approved extension may appeal to the Academic Standards Committee, which may waive the late penalty if it finds that the delay was caused by circumstances beyond their control, no later than 48 hours after the deadline.' Two staff members read the draft differently. One believes the 48-hour limit applies to filing the appeal; the other believes it applies to the original submission. A separate concern is the phrase 'beyond their control,' which a reviewer says could refer to the committee's control rather than the student's. The office must publish tomorrow. The policy's legal meaning cannot change; only the wording can be edited.
1. State the two readings of the 48-hour sentence and the practical difference for a student who submits 30 hours late and files an appeal 60 hours after the deadline. Which reading is grammatically stronger, and why?
Read the worked answer
Reading A (appeal-filing limit): the student may appeal, but the appeal must be filed within 48 hours after the deadline. On these facts the appeal is filed 60 hours after the deadline, so it is 12 hours late and should be rejected unless the hospitalisation exception applies.
Reading B (submission limit): the late submission itself must occur within 48 hours after the deadline for the student to have appeal rights. The student submitted 30 hours late, which is within 48 hours, so the appeal is not barred by this sentence.
Which is grammatically stronger? Reading A. The phrase 'no later than 48 hours after the deadline' sits at the end of the main clause whose verb phrase is 'may appeal'. It most naturally modifies the act of appealing. Reading B requires the phrase to attach to 'submit' inside the relative clause 'who submit assessed work after the published deadline', which is possible but less direct. The sentence is still defective because the modifier is separated from the verb it modifies by a long relative clause, so both readings are available to a careful reader.
Practical point: under A the student loses the appeal; under B the student keeps it. That is a material difference in penalty, not a stylistic preference.
2. Rewrite the sentence so that it expresses Reading A unambiguously while preserving the intended legal meaning. Explain each change you make.
Read the worked answer
A defensible rewrite is:
A student who submits assessed work after the published deadline without an approved extension may appeal to the Academic Standards Committee. The appeal must be filed no later than 48 hours after the published deadline. The Committee may waive the late penalty if it finds that the delay was caused by circumstances beyond the student's control. The 48-hour filing limit does not apply if the student was hospitalised.
Changes and reasons:
- Split the long sentence. The original packs eligibility, waiver discretion and a time limit into one sentence, which lets the time phrase drift. Separating the filing rule gives 'must be filed' its own clear subject and deadline.
- Move the time phrase next to 'filed'. 'The appeal must be filed no later than 48 hours after the published deadline' leaves no plausible attachment to 'submit'.
- Replace 'their' with 'the student's'. The original pronoun could refer to the Committee or to students. The possessive singular removes that ambiguity and matches the distributive singular 'a student'.
- Make the hospital exception explicit. The original 'unless the student was hospitalized' could be read as excusing late submission or late filing. The rewrite states that it excuses the filing limit, which is Reading A.
3. A colleague proposes replacing 'which may waive' with 'and it may waive.' Does that resolve the pronoun problem? What ambiguity remains?
Read the worked answer
What it fixes: 'which' in the original can refer either to the Academic Standards Committee or, less naturally, to the deadline. Replacing it with 'and it may waive' makes the Committee the clear antecedent because a deadline cannot perform the action of waiving. The verb 'waive' selects an agent capable of discretion, so the pronoun is semantically disambiguated.
What it does not fix: the 48-hour phrase still sits at the end and can modify either filing the appeal or making the late submission. The replacement also leaves 'beyond their control' untouched: 'their' can still be read as the Committee's control rather than the student's. Finally, 'without an approved extension' remains capable of modifying either 'submit' or 'students'-does an extension excuse the lateness, or does holding an extension disqualify a student from appealing? The rewrite improves one antecedent but does not make the sentence publication-ready. A structural rewrite, not a pronoun swap, is needed.