Dave's ESL Cafe's Student Discussion Forums

[christina_nguyen]

"Buyers must show a government-issued photo ID, such as a driver's license, and sign a logbook. Stores are required to keep a record about purchases, which includes the product name, quantity sold, name and address of purchaser, and date and time of the sale, for at least two years."


1st question: Why is it a driver's license when the subject buyers is plural??

2nd question: Why is singular form of the nouns is used in the passage?? Shouldn't plural form be used because there are more than one purchasers??

[lotus]

Hi Christina,

I would re-write the paragraph as:

Buyers must show a government-issued photo ID, such as a driver's license, and sign a log-book. Stores are required to keep records of all purchases, each of which must include the product name, quantity sold, name and address of purchaser, and date and time of sale. These records must be kept for at least two years.

1st question: Why is it a driver's license when the subject buyers is plural?

Each buyer is a single person who must show an ID and sign a log-book. The driver's license satisfies the single photo ID requirement for each person.

2nd question: Why is singular form of the nouns is used in the passage? Shouldn't plural form be used because there are more than one purchaser?

Yes (as edited), records should be plural. The individual category for each record is singular. As a group, they make up an individual record.

You could retain the "single" record, but specify the individual categories so that it's not vague. Here, "a record of purchases" is actually all the records (like a record of your taxes). "My accountant has a record of (all) my taxes."

Stores are required to keep a record of all purchases, each of which must include the product name, quantity sold, name and address of purchaser, and date and time of sale.



--lotus

[christina_nguyen]

Thanks for answering lotus

When "each of which" is used, it makes more sense than writing "which" by itself.