Three Sentences in a Draft Memo
An office manager is drafting a memo about a storage-room cleanup and sends you three sentences to check:
- "Walking into the storage room, the new labels had already been stacked on the wrong shelf."
- "Each of the three drivers who cover the weekend routes have a printed map."
- "The shipment arrived on Tuesday, we unpacked it the same day."
The manager wants the memo to sound professional but does not want the meaning changed. Sentence 3 is meant to show that the unpacking happened right after the delivery, not to suggest the two events were unrelated.
1. Repair sentence 1 and explain what went wrong in a way the manager could repeat to a colleague.
Read the worked answer
Revision: "Walking into the storage room, I saw that the new labels had already been stacked on the wrong shelf."
Diagnosis: the opening phrase "Walking into the storage room" describes whoever is doing the walking. In the original sentence, the only noun available to do the walking is "the new labels" - and labels cannot walk. The phrase is left dangling.
Fix pattern: name the person immediately after the comma. Any of these works:
- "Walking into the storage room, the supervisor found the new labels..."
- "When I walked into the storage room, the new labels had already been stacked..."
The second version removes the opening phrase entirely, which also eliminates the problem. Do not fix it by adding a comma or by rewording the label clause - the misplaced actor is the issue, not the punctuation.
2. In sentence 2, the manager wants to change "have" to "has" but is worried that "cover" should then also change to "covers." Explain which verb changes and which does not.
Read the worked answer
Revision: "Each of the three drivers who cover the weekend routes has a printed map."
Why only one verb changes: the sentence contains two verbs, and they have different subjects.
- "cover" belongs to who, and who refers back to drivers - plural. So "drivers who cover" is correct and stays plural.
- "has" belongs to the main subject, Each. "Each" is singular no matter how many drivers follow it, so it takes "has."
The test: cover up the phrase "of the three drivers who cover the weekend routes" and read what is left - "Each ... has a printed map." That is the agreement that matters.
Changing "cover" to "covers" would be an overcorrection: it would make the relative clause disagree with "drivers."
3. Repair sentence 3 in a way that keeps the intended meaning, and explain why one common fix would be the wrong choice here.
Read the worked answer
The problem: two complete sentences are joined by only a comma - a comma splice. "The shipment arrived on Tuesday" and "we unpacked it the same day" could each stand alone.
Acceptable repairs that keep the meaning:
- "The shipment arrived on Tuesday, and we unpacked it the same day."
- "The shipment arrived on Tuesday; we unpacked it the same day."
- "The shipment arrived on Tuesday, so we unpacked it the same day." (adds a cause that is plausible but slightly stronger)
- "After the shipment arrived on Tuesday, we unpacked it the same day."
The wrong fix: replacing the comma with a period is fine mechanically, but changing the joining word to "but" or "although" would flip the relationship into a contrast, and the manager explicitly wants sequence, not contrast. Adding "however" would do the same damage.
Rule to state: a comma alone cannot join two independent clauses; use a period, a semicolon, or a comma plus a coordinating conjunction - and choose the conjunction that matches the intended relationship.