Sentence of the Week #8

[From Michelle Yeoman:]

Editing Solution: Last Week’s Sentence

Thank you for reading the eighth installment in this series. As a reminder, below is Sentence of the Week #7:

            We recorded the followings: height, weight, temperature, speed, and age.

The error in this sentence is the word followings, which should be following. The corrected sentence is below:

            We recorded the following: height, weight, temperature, speed, and age.

Because the list contains multiple items, introducing it with the plural form (followings) might seem logical. However, the standard wording is the following. Like some other words or phrases in English, the following is singular in form but can be plural in meaning.

I look forward to reading your comments in the following week!

Sentence of the Week #8:

The sentence below has 1 definite error:       

            Before writing the proposal, they reviewed the literatures.   

Please correct the error, and submit the corrected sentence and any remarks as a comment on this post. I plan to post and discuss the solution next week.

Do you have a sentence that you would like us to consider using as the Sentence of the Week? Please e-mail submissions to Michelle at msyeoman@gmail.com with the subject line “Sentence of the Week”. Submissions should be your own work—don’t nominate a colleague’s writing :). 

Please also feel free to e-mail suggestions relating to this series.