It’s so reassuring to know ASIO continues to be a bastion of accuracy. Saturday’s AFR ad says being an ASIO officer rather than a writer is a way of doing “something better with your brain”.  Only problem is that in the fifth line there is a glaring grammatical error: “On the one hand,” the ad says, “there’s Intelligence Officers protecting our way of life…”. As any real professional writer (and yes, I am one of those) knows, this is an incorrect mix of singular and plural. It should read “there are Intelligence Officers” as “Officers” is clearly plural.  The last sentence is troublesome too: ”So the next thing I will write is my application” probably lacks a comma after ”so” and might better read ”So, the next thing I write will be my application”, thus resolving an awkward shift in tense. Just thought we’d say.