Editing Tests

[Lieutenant Kije]

Tomorrow I have an interview and a short test for a proofreading job.  I know that a lot of you have much more experience than I with editing and the like and have probably taken tests like this be it for employment or school.  I was just curious as to what I should look out for/what are some common traps they lay for you in these tests.  Any ideas?

[Fellfrosch]

I've seen so many of these tests, and most of them try to catch you with the word "misspell," or some variation of it. I think it's some kind of an in-joke. Other than that, just make sure you know the difference between affect and effect, and when to use -ible instead of -able, and you should be fine. Also, as my wife recently learned, collinear is an accepted variant of colinear.

[Lieutenant Kije]

Okay, I won't be too worried then.  Thanks!

[stacer]

Depending on the company, these tests can get into GRE-like word comparison. Part of the test at Deseret Book, for example, involved having to pick out the misspelled word in a series of lists, and the words can get challenging, but if you're well-read and know how to spell a few more complicated words, you should be okay. It's nothing compared to how my lit crit teacher grades our papers. Dangling modifiers? Subjective conjunctions as opposed to coordinating conjunctions? Sheesh. You usually don't run into stuff like that.

[Lieutenant Kije]

It was pretty basic.  Although they did throw out the present and past tenses of to lie (intransitive) and to lay (transitive.)  Who knows if I got that one right.

[Mistress of Darkness]

Crap I used to know how to conjugate those verbs too. It was easiest if I conjugated the verbs on a scratch piece of paper, and then picked whichever tense and verb they were looking for.

stacer do you remember?

[stacer]

Oh man, if only I could. My boss in Chicago would constantly correct me on that (it's an understatement to say that she was a stickler for old-fashioned, perfect grammar, something akin to what a 1950s grammar teacher would expect). I'd say if I have any grammar hangups, that one's at the top of the list now. She corrected me so many times that I more confused than ever.

I think, though, that it's:

I lie down.

I lay the paper on the desk.

I lay down yesterday.

I went to lie down.



....

I give up. I think I'll always have a block over it now.

[Lieutenant Kije]

In a gesture equivalent to throwing up both hands in the air, I just put laid for both past tenses.

[Mistress of Darkness]

This is what I can remember:

"Today I lie. Yesterday I lay. In pain, I have lain."

I think that's right . . .

[fuzzyoctopus]

I believe that's right.  I never had problems with lay and lie.
I'm in 325 right now, actually, but I have it from Skousen who is a die-hard linguist.  So while he's an excellent teacher it means he'll accept anything that sounds correct in speech.  

[Lieutenant Kije]

Now that's my kind of guy.

[Mistress of Darkness]

Oh, I'm pretty sure that was my prof too. I learned about linguistics, but unfortunately not much about grammar.