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I want to say this following sentence.

The decisions in making a project plan that are affected by variable X are presented in Table 4.1

However, the grammarly, a grammar software, says that my sentence should be

The decisions in making a project plan that is affected by variable X is presented in Table 4.1

The software argues that the "be" explain the word "plan". Meanwhile, I want to explain the word "decisions" instead of "plan".

How should I write the proper sentence?

Thank you

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  • I think that software takes the immediate neighbor of that as the reference. By the way, I guess "the decisions in making a project plan" is not an easy reading. I would say something like "As depicted in Table 4.1, making a project plan includes decisions which are affected by variable X " – Cardinal Jul 06 '17 at 19:42
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    There is no software that can substitute for the hard work of learning English (or any language). – P. E. Dant Reinstate Monica Jul 06 '17 at 22:25
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    You're right, grammarly is wrong. See our Canonical Post on grammar checkers. – StoneyB on hiatus Jul 06 '17 at 22:42
  • By the way, to eliminate ambiguity about the precedent of that, you might rearrange the sentence: "The decisions that are affected by variable X in making a project plan are presented in Table 4.1." – P. E. Dant Reinstate Monica Jul 07 '17 at 00:34

1 Answers1

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Yours is more correct but still sounds odd. Something like the following may be better:

The project planning decisions that are affected by variable X are presented in Table 4.1.

I believe you're right in thinking that Grammarly thinks the variable affects the project plan, while you mean to say that the variable affects the decisions. Using the noun phrase project planning decisions eliminates that ambiguity.

As an aside, I'm more worried about this sentence in your question:

However, the grammarly, a grammar software, says that my sentence should be

Grammarly is the name of something so it does not need the definite article.

And software is uncountable so a grammar software does not make sense. Instead you could use grammar software or a grammar software package or even a piece of grammar software. But never a software or softwares.

tjp
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