{"id":7852,"date":"2013-07-11T04:41:04","date_gmt":"2013-07-11T04:41:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/testpreparations.com\/help\/?p=3503"},"modified":"2014-12-02T08:26:59","modified_gmt":"2014-12-02T08:26:59","slug":"proofreading-for-errors-in-capitalization-spelling-and-punctuation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/schooltutoring.com\/help\/proofreading-for-errors-in-capitalization-spelling-and-punctuation\/","title":{"rendered":"Proofreading for Errors in Capitalization, Spelling, and Punctuation"},"content":{"rendered":"

Overview:\u00a0 What Are Mechanical Errors?<\/strong>
\nAlthough many proofreading questions on the English portion of the SAT and ACT are to catch errors in standard English usage, some questions involve errors in capitalization, spelling, and punctuation.\u00a0 These types of mechanical errors are also common in everyday writing, such as classroom and test essays.\u00a0 While many spelling errors might be caught with the spell-check, capitalization and punctuation errors will not.\u00a0 However, they will be caught by teachers and editors, so it’s best to check for them before the paper is submitted.<\/p>\n

Disadvantages of Mechanical Errors<\/strong>
\nFor the most part, errors in capitalization, spelling, and punctuation do not change the readability of the sentence.\u00a0 Errors in capitalization and spelling violate standardization, and errors in punctuation may change the meaning subtly.\u00a0 For example, compare the statement “The store is opening tomorrow” with the question The store is opening tomorrow?”\u00a0 Therefore, errors are harder to catch.<\/p>\n

Capitalization Errors<\/strong>
\nIt’s merely a case of reviewing capitalization conventions to proofread for capitalization errors.\u00a0 Proper nouns and pronouns are capitalized, as well as the first words in a sentence.\u00a0 However, if the proper noun is the name of a business and consists of two or more words, more than the first word is capitalized.\u00a0\u00a0 Compare “Apple Computers” and “Dell”.\u00a0 In addition, words may be in a passage that shouldn’t<\/em> be capitalized, such as “The famous Operatic Tenor Enrico Caruso was really a baritone.”<\/p>\n

Spelling Errors<\/strong>
\nTest developers use the tendency for skilled readers to substitute the correct words, \u00a0whether or not they are spelled correctly, as long as the first few and last letters are correct.\u00a0 That makes spelling errors hard to catch when proofreading.\u00a0 The song, “The Consequences of Fall-ing” refers to the problems that result from acting on an infatuation.\u00a0 Even though readers understand the sentence, whether or not they know the song, they might not notice the spelling error. (There is a spelling error there, even in a paragraph about spelling errors.)<\/p>\n

Punctuation Errors<\/strong>
\nPunctuation marks are the directions that writers use to determine how words should be read.\u00a0 Although punctuation errors are hard to catch, they depend on typical conventions. Sentences must be ended by periods, question marks, or exclamation points.\u00a0 Commas in compound sentences separate independent clauses.\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0Commas are also used to separate three or more nouns, phrases, or clauses in a series.<\/p>\n

Do you need to know more about how test questions on the SAT or ACT are scored? Learn more<\/a> about how we are assisting thousands of students each academic year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Overview:\u00a0 What Are Mechanical Errors? Although many proofreading questions on the English portion of the SAT and ACT are to catch errors in standard English usage, some questions involve errors in capitalization, spelling, and punctuation.\u00a0 These types of mechanical errors are also common in everyday writing, such as classroom and test essays.\u00a0 While many spelling […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":3188,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2841,3019,2851,3018],"tags":[227,3250,1443,3291],"class_list":["post-7852","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-act","category-comprehension-and-grammar","category-sat","category-writing-act","tag-capitalization","tag-proofreading","tag-punctuation","tag-spelling"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/schooltutoring.com\/help\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7852","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/schooltutoring.com\/help\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/schooltutoring.com\/help\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/schooltutoring.com\/help\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/schooltutoring.com\/help\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7852"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/schooltutoring.com\/help\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7852\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/schooltutoring.com\/help\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3188"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/schooltutoring.com\/help\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7852"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/schooltutoring.com\/help\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7852"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/schooltutoring.com\/help\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7852"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}