The Counter Procedure
A new starter at a benefits office is told to follow the counter procedure exactly. The paragraph she is given reads: 'Each of the caseworkers are required to log every call. Neither the team leader nor the deputies has authority to waive the fee. If a claimant fails to attend a scheduled appointment, they must be contacted within two working days.' About 40 appointments a month are missed. In her first week the new starter rang the caseworkers whose claimants had missed appointments rather than the claimants themselves, and seven claimants were not contacted within the deadline. Her supervisor says she has misread the procedure, but cannot point to the sentence that misled her.
1. Identify the grammatical fault in the first sentence, name it, and give a corrected version.
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Fault: subject-verb agreement.
The subject is 'Each', which is singular. 'Caseworkers' sits inside a prepositional phrase ('of the caseworkers') and cannot govern the verb. The verb should therefore be singular.
Incorrect: 'Each of the caseworkers are required...' Corrected: 'Each of the caseworkers is required to log every call.'
A reader who takes the plural noun nearest the verb as the subject will mis-parse the sentence, which is one reason agreement errors matter in instructions even when the meaning is recoverable.
2. Explain how the third sentence could have produced the new starter's error, and rewrite it to remove the ambiguity.
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The third sentence contains a pronoun with no clear antecedent. In 'If a claimant fails to attend... they must be contacted', 'they' can refer to:
- the claimant, who then receives the call; or
- the caseworkers, mentioned in the first sentence and the obvious agents of the office.
Nothing in the sentence settles it. The operational difference is large, because the two readings name different people to be contacted and different people to do the contacting.
Rewrite either as: 'If a claimant fails to attend a scheduled appointment, the caseworker must contact the claimant within two working days.'
Or, if the claimant is the one to act: 'If a claimant fails to attend a scheduled appointment, the claimant must contact the office within two working days.'
Naming the actor and the person acted on in full removes the referent problem entirely.
3. Sentence two reads: 'Neither the team leader nor the deputies has authority to waive the fee.' Is this an error? Explain your answer.
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It is not a clear error, but it is inconsistent.
With 'neither...nor', two conventions compete:
- Traditional: 'neither' is singular, so 'has'.
- Proximity: the verb agrees with the nearer subject, 'deputies', so 'have'.
Formal drafting often prefers proximity agreement, which would give 'have'. The sentence is therefore defensible under one convention and awkward under the other.
The practical criticism is different: a procedure that leaves a grammatical choice open invites a reader to infer a rule. Rewriting removes the doubt, for example: 'No team leader or deputy may waive the fee.' That form is singular, unambiguous and shorter.