By: nikky Howard
Submitted: 2010-06-14 02:37:52 | Word Count: 611
The web is overburdened with proofreading exercises that offer the trainee or novice proof reader very very little in the method of a challenge. Every different line contains a manifestly obvious error: a spelling mistake that practically leaps off the page, demanding the proof reader's attention; or a grammatical gaffe therefore convoluted and unnatural, the proof reader can't facilitate but get knotted up by its sheer awkwardness.
The following exercise contains simply three refined errors. Nothing obvious. Simply a trio of very little slips ups, the kind of mistakes anybody will make. The kind of errors, in fact, that you're probably to encounter in the important world of business and professional proofreading.
Best of luck.
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The Proofreading Exercise
The first essential of a business document, the quality to that all others should be subordinated, is excellent clearness of meaning or lucidity. No trace of ambiguity ought to allow even the most ingenious lawyer to extract 2 meanings from our communication. The recipient of a letter can naturally construe it in the sense most favorable to himself; and if this sense is more favorable to him than we tend to mean it to be, we tend to ourselves are responsible for any loss that will ensure. It needs much practice within the formation of sentences and in the employment of words before this freedom from ambiguity or double-that means will be attained.
To realize lucidity:
1. Have a clear idea of what you want to say, and then say it briefly.
2. Don't let a contemporary plan intrude on the expression of the first: preserve the unity of the sentence.
Mr Lorrimer, in his Letters of a Self-Made Merchant to his Son, puts this advise better:
"A business man's conversation (and writing) should be regulated by fewer and less complicated rules than any different perform of the human animal. They're:
1. Have one thing to say.
2. Say it.
3. Stop talking (or writing).
Starting before you recognize what you would like to say, and keeping on once you've got said it, lands a merchant in a lawsuit or the poor house, and one's a short cut to other."
Proofreading Exercise: Answer
In the primary paragraph, we have a tendency to have, 'and if this sense is additional favorable to him than we mean it to be, we have a tendency to ourselves are responsible for any loss that may guarantee', after we should have had, 'and if this sense is more favorable to him than we mean it to be, we have a tendency to ourselves are accountable for any loss that may ensue'.
Within the sixth paragraph, we tend to have, 'Mr Lorrimer, in his Letters of a Self-Created Merchant to his Son, puts this advice higher', once we ought to have had 'Mr Lorrimer, in his Letters of a Self-Created Merchant to his Son, puts this advice better'.
In the final paragraph, we have, 'Beginning before you know what you want to mention, and keeping on once you've got said it, lands a merchant in an exceedingly lawsuit or the poor house, and one's a short cut to other.' It should have read, 'Beginning before you recognize what you wish to mention, and keeping on once you've got said it, lands a merchant in a lawsuit or the poor house, and one's a brief cut to the other."
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