Chicago Style Workout 33: Editing and Proofreading Quiz No. 1

/ January 22, 2019

Three newly sharpened crayons in pink, red and orange colors on a thick white paper with a distinctive pattern and soft shadows

Sharpen Your Pencils!

This is the first of a series of workouts that will test your editing knowledge and proofreading skills.

Hint: Each numbered example includes no more than one error.

Another hint: Some of the examples are wrong by just about any standard. Others are contrary to Chicago style but may be correct according to other styles (see the disclaimer below).

Take the quiz—and then read the results to see how you did.

Good luck!

Subscribers to The Chicago Manual of Style Online may click through to the linked sections of the Manual (cited in the answers). (We also offer a 30-day free trial of CMOS Online.)

Note: Style guides and dictionaries sometimes disagree. This quiz is designed to test your knowledge of The Chicago Manual of Style.

Now updated to refer and link to the 18th edition.

Chicago Style Workout 33: Editing and Proofreading Quiz No. 1

1. Seeing no napkins on the table, my sleeves became my only option.
2. The contract clearly specified “no pets larger than a loaf of bread“—as if we were playing a game of twenty questions.
3. The movie, Wonder Woman, is based on a character that was created in the early 1940s. [Hint: Assume the movie hasn’t been mentioned in a previous sentence.]
4. Don’t worry, I would never do that!
5. This so-called style guide reads more like a self-help book.
6. Fifty years from now, no one will be able to claim to have seen The Beatles live in concert.
7. Does the iPhone have a clock app?
8. The results of the study were inconclusive, that is, they did not show what we wanted them to.
9. Rodriguez was born at midnight, August 21.
10. With the introduction of the microgroove LP (a.k.a. vinyl), high fidelity was finally in reach for ordinary middle-class consumers.

 

Photo: Three red colored pencils, by Old Photo Profile, licensed under CC BY 2.0.

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