Monday, April 5, 2010

Options to correct inconsistencies


The Peacebuilding Support Office was established to assist the Peacebuilding Commission, administer the Peacebuilding Fund, and serve the Secretary-General in coordinating UN agencies in their peacebuilding efforts.

The above is a sentence taken from an article of an online newspaper.

Inconsistent verbs (singular and plural) are used with the same subject. For rectification, the sentence can be recast as "The Peacebuilding Support Office was established to assist the Peacebuilding Commission, administers the Peacebuilding Fund, and serves the Secretary-General in coordinating UN agencies in their peacebuilding efforts."

'The Peacebuilding Support Office' is obviously an organisation/a collection of individuals and can be followed by a plural verb/s. The complete predicate of the first part of the sentence can be converted into a participial phrase and the sentence will become grammatical: The Peacebuilding Support Office established to assist the Peacebuilding Commission, administer the Peacebuilding Fund, and serve the Secretary-General in coordinating UN agencies in their peacebuilding efforts.

Which is the better option then? The better choice will be the one that will not create further inconsistencies with other parts of the article.

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