Neighbourhood Newsletter: Fix the Subject–Verb Agreement

1. Take the editor’s role

You are editing a fictional residents’ newsletter. The facts and organisation are already agreed. Your narrow job is to fix eight subject–verb agreement errors. Some sentences are already correct; leave those alone.

First find the subject head. Then choose or repair the verb. Do not change times, move equipment or rewrite the writer’s message simply because you prefer a different style.

2. Read the source note

Draft newsletter, with eight deliberate agreement errors: The list of weekend activities are on the noticeboard outside the garden shed. The box of spare keys are in the office beside the entrance. Each of the volunteers have a printed copy of the weekly plan. Ava and Ben checks the shared tools every Friday before the morning session. Everyone know where the gloves are kept and how to return them. The new water bottles is on the bottom shelf near the sink. Our repair notes includes the times for each job and the name of its organiser. The noticeboard do not show last year’s jobs because we need the current plan. The shared shed is open from nine until five every weekday. The volunteers have a simple checklist for borrowing and returning equipment. The tools near the gate are ready to use. Someone has already checked the ladder and written the date on its label. Please leave the walkway clear and put empty containers back in their marked places. These small checks help us start each activity on time.

A separate editing example

Before: The pile of papers are ready.

Head: pile; description: of papers

After: The pile of papers is ready.

The example shows the method, not an extra error to count in the newsletter. Work from the text rather than from the nearest plural word.

3. Trace the subjects

Type only the subject head from each quoted sentence.

4. Choose and correct

Choose four correct verbs, then repair four other errors.

5. Write the clean paragraph

Your turn · self-review

Write the clean update

Write your own answer first. Then compare it with the model and checklist. Natural alternatives are welcome when they preserve the facts.

Practice only. Your writing stays on this page; it is not submitted or saved.

1. 1Write an 80–100-word clean extract using at least four corrected patterns and preserving the newsletter facts.
   Model answer and explanation

   The list of weekend activities is on the noticeboard outside the garden shed. The box of spare keys is in the office beside the entrance. Each of the volunteers has a printed copy of the weekly plan. Ava and Ben check the shared tools every Friday before the morning session. Everyone knows where the gloves are kept. The new water bottles are on the bottom shelf near the sink. The volunteers have a simple checklist for borrowing and returning equipment.

2. 2In two sentences, explain why list and each are easy to get wrong.
   Model answer and explanation

   In the list of weekend activities, list is the singular head, while activities is only part of its description. In each of the volunteers, each controls the verb even though the word volunteers is plural.

Self-check: preserve the stated facts; identify each subject head; match the finite verb; leave correct sentences unchanged; use a base-form main verb after does. A shorter or differently worded explanation is acceptable if it identifies the controlling head accurately.

6. Check against the editor’s key

Full corrected newsletter: The list of weekend activities is on the noticeboard outside the garden shed. The box of spare keys is in the office beside the entrance. Each of the volunteers has a printed copy of the weekly plan. Ava and Ben check the shared tools every Friday before the morning session. Everyone knows where the gloves are kept and how to return them. The new water bottles are on the bottom shelf near the sink. Our repair notes include the times for each job and the name of its organiser. The noticeboard does not show last year’s jobs because we need the current plan. The shared shed is open from nine until five every weekday. The volunteers have a simple checklist for borrowing and returning equipment. The tools near the gate are ready to use. Someone has already checked the ladder and written the date on its label. Please leave the walkway clear and put empty containers back in their marked places. These small checks help us start each activity on time.

Eight repairs: list → is; box → is; each → has; Ava and Ben → check; everyone → knows; bottles → are; notes → include; noticeboard → does. Each change follows the subject head. The last change repairs the auxiliary; show correctly stays in the base form.

Correct controls: The shared shed is… uses singular shed. The volunteers have… uses plural volunteers. The tools near the gate are… uses plural tools, not singular gate. Someone has… uses the singular pronoun someone. The final sentence, These small checks help…, correctly uses plural checks. Leave all of these unchanged.

The scored key is: 1 list; 2 box; 3 each; 4 notes; 5 check; 6 knows; 7 are; 8 does; 9 is; 10 is; 11 has; 12 include. No collective-noun variation is needed to solve these items.

7. Use the two-pass audit

Use the two-pass audit in another paragraph: identify the head, then check its verb. After that, read for paragraph flow and clear references. Correct agreement does not automatically make a paragraph easy to follow, so keep sentence-level and paragraph-level reviews separate.

Transfer model: The schedule of talks is online. The names beside each talk are correct. Schedule controls is; names controls are. Do not let the nearer noun talks or talk distract you.