School’s out (or nearly out) across the nation and summer vacation beckons. We thought another proofreading quiz would be a good way to kick off the summer fun.
The five numbered paragraphs below are laced with errors — some glaring and some that are less obvious. But they’re all unequivocally wrong. Acceptable variations — such as words with different spellings (e.g., advisor, adviser) or sentences that could be punctuated multiple ways — are not included here.
The figures in parentheses indicate the number of mistakes in each paragraph. Show us how you would correct the following by providing a corrected version, or do like our editors do and use Word’s Track Changes and Comments features:
- When I talked with my boss Natalie about a co-worker’s repeated failure to meet deadlines, she said “Between you and I, there a 100 reasons for firing Patrick, and 99 of them relate in some way to his shoddy performance.” Yet he still works for the company. I definately don’t understand Natalie’s motivation, but it infers there’s more going on then meets the eye. I’ve thought about discussing Patrick’s performance with Natalie’s boss, however, I can’t think of a discrete way to do so without Natalie knowing, so I just keep quite. (11 errors)
- Being agile depends on developing two key attributes; strategic responsiveness and organizational flexibilty. These two qualites are mutually re-enforcing but are developed in different ways, and its easy for a company to possess one without the other. A company can compliment it’s strategic responsiveness strategy with a large amount of built-in mechanisms to ensure you remain fluid and adaptable. (10 errors)
- Byetta (exenatide) is an injectible medication that is a synthetic form of a hormone found in the saliva of a lizard called a gila monster. The drug is very unique because it decreases insulin to lower blood glucose levels, but it does so only when blood glucose levels are to high. As a result, Byeta has a low risk of causing hyperglycemia, which occurs when blood glucose levels dip too low. In 2012, the FDA approved a long-acting version of exanatide, Bydureon, that is injected weekly. (9 errors)
- Understanding how the brain develops can provide insight into how the subconscience works. Childrens’ brains develop the most in the first six years of life. The frist key event is the formation of the neural tube. The tube gradually closes after the edges of the neural plate fuze together. The nueral tube continues to change, eventually becoming the brian and spinal chord. About seven weeks’ in to this first faze is when neurons and synapses began to develop. (12 errors)
- Mr. Jones, a patent attorney in the Silicone Valley, has litigated more than 45 patent cases involving a wide variety of technologies. This Spring, he lead the trial team for ABC Computers in it’s victory over XYZ Corp. Mr. Smith has more than 25 years experience with patient litigation in the State of California and before the USTPO. (9 errors)
Email your answers, either in the body of the email or as a Word or PDF attachment, to info@ProofreadNOW.com. Be sure to put “PRN Quiz” in the subject line of your email.
Whoever submits the entry with the most correct answers will receive a $25 Amazon gift card. In the event of a tie, whichever of those entries was submitted first will win. The contest runs until 6 p.m. ET on June 22. We’ll publish the answers and explanations and announce the winner in our post next week.
