Module 6: Common Punctuation Mistakes

Know what to expect from our Becoming A Proofreader course and get situated before delving into the details of what it means to be a proofreader.

Find out why editing and proofreading have traditionally been treated as separate tasks in print publishing, as well as how they often merge in digital work. Get to grips with the ethical issues you might encounter while proofreading. And meet the different client types you might work with once you start your career as a professional proofreader!

If you’re a bit rusty on computing, this module will oil you up! Take a tour through all the tools in Microsoft Word you’ll need to get started with proofreading. If you are a technophobe, worry no more! Our back-to-basics course covers tracking changes, changing the proofing language, setting your user name in Microsoft Word, and more.

Finally, you can nail the difference between ‘there’, ‘they’re’, and ‘their’, and much more. Get to grips with British, US, and Australian spelling, clear up the rules about irregular plurals, and impress friends with your knowledge of closed, open, and hyphenated compounds!

Perfect your prepositions, parenthetical clauses, and parallelism! Fix fragments and faulty agreement! And free yourself from dangling and misplaced modifiers forevermore! Grind down the grammatical gremlins of UK, US, and Australian English, and bust some well-worn myths as you boldly go where no non-proofreader has gone before!

Take our guided tour through everything else you need to know about the nitty-gritty of language, including Latin terms, abbreviations, acronyms and initialisms, number use, and capitalisation. Find out where most people trip up and separate your ‘i.e.’s from your ‘e.g.’s for good!

What’s the difference between a style guide, a style sheet, and a referencing style? Worry no more, we’ve got you covered in our style module. We’ll also talk you through written tone, technical jargon, avoiding offensive language, and how to turn clunky confusion into elegant flow.

We’ll take you back to school with an in-depth look at proofreading academic documents, ranging from undergraduate essays to journal articles and PhD theses. We’ll show you how to work with LaTeX (no, it’s nothing kinky), how to make sure quotes are used properly, when the active and passive voices are appropriate in academic writing, and much more.

Does Harvard hurt your head? Does APA make your eyes ache? Are you shy about Chicago? And what does ALWD even mean? We’ll soothe all your referencing woes with our extended guide to some of the major citation styles, as well as some not-so-well-known ones.

Learn how to work with authors and publishers as we guide you through how to proofread creative writing. This module looks at both fiction and non-fiction, as well as non-standard English, authorial voice, and proofreading dialogue. After completing the lessons, you will be primed to proofread a range of different writing styles and document types common in the publishing world, including book manuscripts, screenplays, and PDF page proofs.

Here, we teach you how to proofread for different business clients. We take you through working with brand voices and understanding how grammatical point of view works in different types of business writing. After completing this module, you will know how to proofread many document types and formats common to business writing, including formal reports, website copy, Excel spreadsheets, PowerPoint presentations, and Google Docs.

Drum roll, please! It’s time to show off what you have learned! In this final part of the course, you'll discover how to find work as a freelance proofreader. We'll also guide you through top review areas and give you a practice mock assignment. Then you’ll take two proofreading tests, which we’ll provide detailed tutor feedback on. If you score 80% or above on this and the final assignment in Becoming An Editor, we’ll offer you the opportunity to undertake a paid trial as a freelance proofreader and editor with Proofed.