About "Respective"

the 'respective' is redundant in 'its respective area'.

i would add a comma after 'area'; but i am not sure about 'serves' or 'serve'. hmm, i guess 'serves' to match the tense of 'handles' (but could be 'handle' and 'serve').

I agree with dec. The "respective" seems a bit redundant.

It's an interesting question, because the author here is obviously trying to comment on how "each" office operates in its own "area". In that sense, "respective" is helpful, because it singularly conveys how each individual office is responsible for its region.

One way or another, it's kind of a nice word to have to use in an instance like this!

Yes the_poetye, I agree it is good usage. To the person posting this question I would argue that this paragraph you present is perfect. The use of the term respective here arises because of the interruption in the sentence where each office is identified. If those regional offices were not identified, then the paragraph could have simply said something like there are three regional offices and each is responsible for the following duties. When you introduce that sort of parenthetical you want to say respective because the term sort of implies looking back and in this case we are in fact looking back at the parenthetical remark.

In fact if we leave the word respective out of the paragraph we run the risk of someone imagining some possible overlap with the specific duties that are listed at the end of the paragraph.

I hope you're not confusing respective with the similar word respectively. When we say respectively we are talking about associating a set of traits with a set of nouns. So I can say I gave two and $10 to Sally and Jesse respectively.

I was confused by your definition. It might help if you gave an example. I tried but couldn't really come up with one myself. I was trying to imagine plural and singular nouns but that really didn't help me.

As an old purist, I believe "corresponding" could replace "respective" here, to keep all other singular references unchanged. When using "respective", the singular references should all become plural. Let's see (ahem)!

When "respective" is used, the text should be:

The Division’s three regional offices - in Chicago, New York, and San Francisco - handle criminal matters arising in their respective areas and serve as the Division’s liaison with U.S. attorneys, state attorneys general, and other regional law enforcement agencies.

When "corresponding" is used, the text would be:

Each of the Division’s three regional offices - in Chicago, New York, and San Francisco - handles criminal matters arising in its corresponding area and serves as the Division’s liaison with U.S. attorneys, state attorneys general, and other regional law enforcement agencies.