A couple grammar fixes for problem-specs

BNAndras · July 5, 2026, 11:33pm

exercism/problem-specifications/blob/77d50e4a40e93b90bf45fa610a2329087e4ca3d1/exercises/all-your-base/introduction.md?plain=1#L3


      
          # Introduction
          
          You've just been hired as professor of mathematics.
          Your first week went well, but something is off in your second week.
          The problem is that every answer given by your students is wrong!
          Luckily, your math skills have allowed you to identify the problem: the student answers _are_ correct, but they're all in base 2 (binary)!
          Amazingly, it turns out that each week, the students use a different base.
          To help you quickly verify the student answers, you'll be building a tool to translate between bases.

should be

You’ve just been hired as a professor of mathematics.

BNAndras · July 5, 2026, 11:49pm

I noticed two spots where a singular subject has a plural verb.

For Allergies,

github.com

exercism/problem-specifications/blob/77d50e4a40e93b90bf45fa610a2329087e4ca3d1/exercises/allergies/description.md?plain=1#L7


      
          # Description
          
          Given a person's allergy score, determine whether or not they're allergic to a given item, and their full list of allergies.
          
          An allergy test produces a single numeric score which contains the information about all the allergies the person has (that they were tested for).
          
          The list of items (and their value) that were tested are:
          
          - eggs (1)
          - peanuts (2)
          - shellfish (4)
          - strawberries (8)
          - tomatoes (16)
          - chocolate (32)
          - pollen (64)
          - cats (128)

should be

The list of items (and their value) that were tested is:

For DOT DSL,

github.com

exercism/problem-specifications/blob/77d50e4a40e93b90bf45fa610a2329087e4ca3d1/exercises/dot-dsl/description.md?plain=1#L6


      
          # Description
          
          A [Domain Specific Language (DSL)][dsl] is a small language optimized for a specific domain.
          Since a DSL is targeted, it can greatly impact productivity/understanding by allowing the writer to declare _what_ they want rather than _how_.
          
          One problem area where they are applied are complex customizations/configurations.
          
          For example the [DOT language][dot-language] allows you to write a textual description of a graph which is then transformed into a picture by one of the [Graphviz][graphviz] tools (such as `dot`).
          A simple graph looks like this:
          
              graph {
                  graph [bgcolor="yellow"]
                  a [color="red"]
                  b [color="blue"]
                  a -- b [color="green"]
              }

should be

One problem area where they are applied is complex customizations/configurations.

Another quick fix for DOT DSL is circles should be plural on this line: problem-specifications/exercises/dot-dsl/description.md at 77d50e4a40e93b90bf45fa610a2329087e4ca3d1 · exercism/problem-specifications · GitHub

Putting this in a file example.dot and running dot example.dot -T png -o example.png creates an image example.png with red and blue circles connected by a green line on a yellow background.

For Killer Sudoku Helper,
problem-specifications/exercises/killer-sudoku-helper/description.md at 77d50e4a40e93b90bf45fa610a2329087e4ca3d1 · exercism/problem-specifications · GitHub should say following cells not followings cells.

Also, “Each continguous two rows" at problem-specifications/exercises/killer-sudoku-helper/description.md at 77d50e4a40e93b90bf45fa610a2329087e4ca3d1 · exercism/problem-specifications · GitHub should probably be “each contiguous pair of rows”. I add that second n myself all the time.

BNAndras · July 5, 2026, 11:58pm

Still procrastinating so I found another quick thing to fix in OCR Numbers.

github.com

exercism/problem-specifications/blob/77d50e4a40e93b90bf45fa610a2329087e4ca3d1/exercises/ocr-numbers/instructions.md?plain=1#L7


      
          # Instructions
          
          Optical Character Recognition or OCR is software that converts images of text into machine-readable text.
          Given a grid of characters representing some digits, convert the grid to a string of digits.
          If the grid has multiple rows of cells, the rows should be separated in the output with a `","`.
          
          - The grid is made of one of more lines of cells.
          - Each line of the grid is made of one or more cells.
          - Each cell is three columns wide and four rows high (3x4) and represents one digit.
          - Digits are drawn using pipes (`"|"`), underscores (`"_"`), and spaces (`" "`).
          
          ## Edge cases
          
          - If the input is not a valid size, your program should indicate there is an error.
          - If the input is the correct size, but a cell is not recognizable, your program should output a `"?"` for that character.
          
          ## Examples

should be

The grid is made of one or more lines of cells.

Yrahcaz7 · July 6, 2026, 4:46am

I think “value” should also be plural here (as “items” is plural):

The list of items (and their values) that were tested is:

BNAndras · July 6, 2026, 5:59am

It’s not technically wrong, but I agree it might be awkwardly written.

You can refer to something in the individual sense to express something shared but specific to each part of a collective. Each item on the list has its own value, and we’re emphasizing that. The previous sentence makes it crystal clear each item has a single score, but if it hadn’t, “and their values” could be read as an item having potentially multiple values. The classical example is “everybody raised their hand” vs. “everybody raised their hands”. In the former, everyone raised a single hand of theirs, but in the latter, perhaps someone raised both of their hands so it’s a little ambiguous.

IsaacG · July 6, 2026, 7:17am

We could make it explicit. Maybe something like,

The items that were tested (and the value for each item) are: