"As Follows" and "The Following" in Technical English
5 exercises — practise introducing colon-led lists correctly with "as follows" and "the following".
0 / 5 completed
1 / 5
Which sentence correctly uses "as follows" to introduce a colon-led list of deployment steps?
"The rollback procedure is as follows: stop traffic, revert the image, and re-run health checks" is correct: "as follows" is a frozen phrase that never changes form, regardless of whether the preceding subject is singular or plural, and it directly precedes the colon. Option B incorrectly drops the "-s" from "follows". Option C wrongly changes the verb before it to "are", but "as follows" itself never varies and the singular subject "procedure" needs "is" anyway. Option D inserts "it", which is not part of the fixed expression.
2 / 5
Choose the sentence that correctly uses "as follows" even though the introduced list has multiple plural items.
"The required environment variables are as follows: API_KEY, DB_HOST, and LOG_LEVEL" is correct: "as follows" stays fixed regardless of the plural subject "variables" (which correctly takes "are" before it). Option B incorrectly drops the "-s" from "follows", a common error assuming it should agree with the plural subject. Option C incorrectly uses singular "is" with the plural subject "variables". Option D incorrectly changes "follows" to the past participle "followed", which is not the fixed idiom.
3 / 5
Which sentence correctly uses "the following" as a determiner introducing a noun before a colon-led list?
"Before merging, confirm the following checks have passed: lint, unit tests, and type-check" is correct: "the following" functions as a determiner directly modifying the noun "checks", a standard pattern for introducing a list item-by-item. Option B incorrectly uses "follows" as if it were an adjective, which is ungrammatical. Option C wrongly substitutes "as follows" (which requires a linking verb like "is/are" before it, not a bare noun phrase) in place of the determiner "the following". Option D incorrectly adds a possessive apostrophe-s to "following", which is not a noun here.
4 / 5
Select the sentence that correctly uses "the following" alone as a noun phrase (without a following noun) before a list.
"To reproduce the bug, do the following: clear cache, restart the service, and resend the request" is correct: "the following" can stand alone as a noun phrase meaning "the things that follow", directly before the colon and list. Option B incorrectly uses "follows" as a noun, which is not idiomatic. Option C incorrectly inserts "as" before "the following", mixing the two fixed patterns. Option D redundantly adds "are" after "following", which already functions as the object of "do" and needs no extra verb.
5 / 5
Which sentence correctly avoids the common error of combining "as follows" and "the following" into one ungrammatical hybrid?
"The migration steps are as follows: back up the schema, apply the patch, and verify row counts" is correct: "as follows" is used correctly on its own after the linking verb "are", without mixing in "the". Option B incorrectly blends "as follows" with "the following" into the ungrammatical "as the following". Option C reorders the words into a meaningless hybrid. Option D places "the" in an invalid position within the fixed phrase.