English Proofreading Test
A little proofreading test for you to figure out today.
This sentense has two mistakes.
What are the mistakes? Try to figure it out before you view the answer below.
The Answer
Have you worked it out yet?
There are two mistakes; however, it’s a bit of a trick question and an important exercise to demonstrate the skills required of professional proofreaders.
- Everyone gets the first mistake: the word sentence is spelt incorrectly. Proofreaders are trained to spot mistakes in grammar, spelling, punctuation etc.
- The second mistake is that the sentence only has one spelling mistake. It should say, ‘this sentense has one mistake‘.
This highlights the proofreaders other skills, that of checking context, content and the correctness of sentences, paragraphs etc. Does the sentence state what it’s supposed to say and is the context correct?
Often during translation, the actual content of the string isn’t checked. All the words are correct, but the sentence might be written incorrectly in English or translated incorrectly.
On a separate note, it’s worth noting that we often find mistakes (both spelling mistakes and syntax errors) in the English documents we’re sent for translation. Good translators will be checking the texts they work on for mistakes and potential mistranslations such as those previously outlined.
The next time you look at authoring, translation or proofreading, remember to check the easy stuff (i.e. spelling) and the harder part (i.e. syntax and grammar).
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