A Farewell Copy-Editing Quiz

It goes without saying that one of the rewards of publishing a blog about language every weekday for seven-plus years has been working with a team of smart, thoughtful writers who have made surprising, often heartfelt, and sometimes hilarious observations about language. One of the unexpected pleasures of editing Lingua Franca, however, has been you, the readers and commenters. I have appreciated your counterarguments and analysis. But what I’ve valued the most is your help. We copy editors are few, we’re human, and we miss things. When you caught a typo, broken link, or factual mistake, you pointed it out in the comments, we corrected it, and we thanked you in reply (because we don’t “ghost” changes — we want to be open about what we do). My copy-editing hat goes off to you, and I thank you, with a bow.

So I thought for one of our last posts you might enjoy a copy-editing quiz. The sentences below are exactly as my team got them (or read them, egads, published elsewhere), except for a few names and details changed to protect the guilty. The errors are in accuracy, clarity, grammar, logic, spelling — everything copy editors look for except rhythm and grace, which we also adjust if needed, but which are hard to test. Post your answers in the comments or, if you prefer not to reveal them to other readers, send them to linguafranca@chronicle.com, with “quiz” in the subject line. I’ll put the answers at the bottom of a post later this week. The first commenter to find all of the errors we found (yes, there could be more — copy editors are often humbled by the awareness of our imperfection — but this test is on what we caught and clarified or corrected) gets a copy of Geoff Pullum’s Lingustics: Why It Matters.

Two requests: 1. You may use the internet to check facts, of course. But please don’t put the entire sentences into a search engine, because you’ll find the corrected versions, even though I have altered them slightly here. I’m trusting you not to cheat. 2. Chronicle copy editors, who helped compile this quiz, are not allowed to participate, obviously.

Here you go, and have fun!

1. As the president of the fund, it angers me when negative experiences, like what happened at Large Public State, deter indigenous people from entering college and pursuing their dreams.

2. My county in North Carolina had a particularly terrible reputation thanks to a billboard on Interstate 95 welcoming drivers to the home of the Ku Klux Klan.

3. Thus in a 1996 article, the French political historian François Hourmand described the peculiar “recognition cum veneration” that greeted the magazine’s work in the United States.

4. The university’s College Republicans chapter filed the lawsuit when the university attempted to charge it a $17,000 security fee to host a rally on campus with the right-wing group, Patriot Player, in February.

5. Long before data breeches at Facebook made headlines for their potential to allow the manipulation of voters, one professor warned his university.

6. Amid calls for Smith to resign, the meeting heard painful testimony from survivors of sexual abuse and the pleading of a board at wit’s end.

7. Strawless Ocean estimates that 71 percent of seabirds and 30 percent of turtles have some kind of plastic in their stomachs, which can cut their mortality rate in half.

8. She said there’s been a huge uptick in requests for the center’s services.

9. Some of us left the South because we were gay, further contributing to the perception of an entire region as virulently homophobic.

10. As the only immigration clinic in western Pennsylvania, Roberts said the office has been thrown into complete chaos since early 2017.

11. The apology came after Jones faced a backlash from lawmakers on both sides of the isle.

Heidi Landecker is a deputy managing editor at The Chronicle.