Either Chris or the new employee ________ the mail before Dolores or Charles ________.
What are your choices?
a. sort/arrives
b. sort/arrive
c. sorts/arrives
d. sorts/arrive
To fill in the blanks correctly, we need to understand the sentence structure and the logical sequence of events.
The sentence structure suggests that there are two separate actions or events happening: someone handling the mail, and Dolores or Charles handling it later.
The options provide are "Chris" and "the new employee" for the first blank, and "Dolores" and "Charles" for the second blank.
To complete the sentence, we need to choose the correct verb forms based on the options provided.
Option 1: Either Chris or the new employee handles the mail before Dolores or Charles.
Option 2: Either Chris or the new employee handle the mail before Dolores or Charles.
Considering the subject-verb agreement, where the verb should agree in number with the subject, the correct choice for the first blank would be "handles" (singular verb) since "either Chris or the new employee" refers to a single entity.
For the second blank, we follow the same rule: "Dolores or Charles" refers to a single entity, and therefore the correct choice would be "handles" (singular verb).
Therefore, the correct sentence would be: "Either Chris or the new employee handles the mail before Dolores or Charles handles it."
To fill in the blank, there are two possibilities: either Chris or the new employee did the mail before Dolores or Charles.
To determine which option is correct, we can use the process of elimination. Let's consider each option separately.
1. If Chris did the mail before Dolores or Charles, then the new employee didn't.
2. If the new employee did the mail before Dolores or Charles, then Chris didn't.
Since we know that either Chris or the new employee did the mail, we can conclude that the other person did not.
Therefore, the completed sentence would be: Either Chris or the new employee did the mail before Dolores or Charles.