Training Your Editor's Eye -- 4

Writers and editors must develop the skill of identifying errors -- and of identifying the kinds of places errors are most likely to occur.

This exercise provides practice in identifying errors that need to be fixed.

Instructions:
  1. Find a problem in each sentence.
  2. On a computer: Move the cursor over it (do not click). On a tablet: Tap on the error.
  3. If the text turns red, read the pop-up with our comment.
  4. Tap or hover over [ Answer ] to see an explanation.
  5. On a tablet, tapping the error a second time removes the pop-up.
  1. If they read about diseases of the elderly, college students sometimes transcend what they learned to their older relatives. [ Answer ]
  2. The magazine explains issues of importance to reader's who don't usually follow politics. [ Answer ]
  3. My article will include interviews with predominate figures like Oprah Winfrey and Jesse Jackson for their incites into the election. [ Answer ]
  4. A professional appearance is about more than the close you where. [ Answer ]
  5. New fashions are adopted through a kind of Domino's affect. [ Answer ]
  6. The magazine expresses women as if they were fashion accessories for men. [ Answer ]
  7. Instantaneous perceptions set off neural reactions in your head without you even being aware of them. [ Answer ]
  8. Headline: 'Shoe-assault served Bush well some US citizens say.' [ Answer ]
  9. This plan will allow citizens to reduce their health insurance by 100 to 150 percent. [ Answer ]
  10. The section of the bag containing the laptop must completely unfold to lay flat on the X-ray belt. [ Answer ]
  11. As a magazine that provides helpful features for parents with young children, my article would provide a window onto the lives of children of deaf parents. [ Answer ]
  12. A 400 pound black bear was calmly going through the trash, licking out the remaining contents of broken eggs and candy-rappers. [ Answer ]
  13. Apple's future, like all technology companies' futures, are squarely dependent upon innovation. [ Answer ]
  14. The leaks were brought to a quick end in 1997 by the return of [Apple CEO Steve] Jobs, whose personal concern for secrecy is tantamount. [ Answer ]
  15. The solution to these and other social disparities lie in a revolution of thinking [ Answer ]
  16. Although his experience are unique, there are parts of Barack Obama that every American can directly connect with. [ Answer ]
  17. I think the research is bias against working-class kids. [ Answer ]
  18. He bought my friend and I drinks and even bought me roses. [ Answer ]
  19. Terry and Michelle never sat down and discussed there relationship [ Answer ]
  20. In Phoenix on Wednesday, more than 200 men in shackles and prison stripes were marched under armed guard past a gantlet of TV cameras to a tent prison encircled by an electric fence. [ Answer ]
Copyright 2009 by Gerald Grow. All rights reserved. Back to Newsroom 101.