Proofreading Test

Your Name: Catie Gilhooly

This test will be completed in two parts. Part 1 is a test over punctuation rules
and grammar errors. Part 2 will ask you to proofread a two-page document. This
test is open-book, open note.

Part 1a: Punctuation Challenge

For this part of the exam, use proofreading marks to correct the punctuation in
the following sentences. You will receive three points for each corrected
sentence.

World War I (also known as the Great War ended in 1918.

Were going to the store later, if you’re interested in joining us.

The police officer who had been injured, ended up in the hospital.

The following public buildings were damaged by the storm, Madison School,
The Bridgetown City Hall, and the police station.

The eagle landed on it’s nest with a fish for its young.

The two squirrels bounded across the road We almost hit them with our car.

The cat slid across the table that was in the middle, of the room.

Paige began complaining about the coffee-she was always complaining about
something-so I ignored her.

Nicole explained “The problem isn’t the economy. It’s the pandemic.”

Beyonce’s best song is Get Me Bodied released in 2006.

Hector asked, “What is the purpose of this idiotic protest.”

He was upset about the graffiti on the wall; which included graphic profanity.

Governor Chavez was interested in solving problems, however, the state

legislature did not agree with his solutions.

Getting a good grade in Professor Young’s class can be challenging: but I

couldn’t understand why Melissa was so stressed out.

Did Taylor just say, “I am the only person able to fix this?”
Part 1b: Grammar Challenge
Proofread the following ten sentences, using proofreading symbols to correct
them. Then, on the right, name the grammar error. In each sentence, there is one
grammar error. You will receive two points for correctly fixing the grammar error
and one point for naming the that error. Hint: There is no apostrophe error or
shifted tense error in the list below.

Correct the Sentence with Proofreading Name the Grammar Error

Marks
My phone was new, but didn’t work. Misused comma

Ryan and Tyler asked if they could borrow Vague pronoun

my soccer ball, and he left it on my porch
later that evening. Ryan
they
If birdwatchers want to see a bald eagle, Pronoun-antecedent error
you can see one today by the Wabash
River.
me
My grandmother gasped when she saw Pronoun-case error
Brandon and I holding hands at the store.
s
One of these politicians need to do Subject-verb disagreement
something about the violence in this town.

Proofreading involves correcting grammar Faulty parallelism

errors, fixing spelling mistakes, and
identify usage problems.
identifying
The team needs to improve they need to Run-on sentence
practice with more intensity.

The arena was completely renovated. To Sentence fragment

get it ready for the Olympics.
and
The car ran the stoplight, it almost hit a Comma splice
pedestrian.
we drove
While driving home from Wisconsin, our Dangling modifier
baby slept comfortably in her car seat.
Proofreading Challenge
There are over twenty-five punctuation, grammar, and formatting errors in the
attached two-page proof. Find these errors and use proofreading marks to
correct them.
Each error you find and correct will be worth one point. If you correct items that
aren’t errors, they won’t count.
Relax. The errors in this proof should be rather obvious. Just use your sheet of
proofreading marks to correct the obvious ones. Mostly, I’m checking to see if
you know how to use the proofreading marks on a proof. So, the errors should be
easy to find.
If you would like to add queries in the margins, please do. You shouldn’t need to,
but you might want to explain a judgment call.
This text was taken from the magazine Iowa State Visions, and you can find the
article at
https://www.isualum.org/s/565/17/interior.aspx?sid=565&gid=1&pgid=6223&cid=
9009&ecid=9009&crid=0&calpgid=2593&calcid=6697
Of course, I’ve messed it up a bit!
 How past epidemics Battered
the Iowa State campus
By Douglas Biggs and Becky Jordan

The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted the life 500-student enrollment reached by 1895-the college
of nearly every person in the world. Stories of and farm had only a number of shallow wells to
how Iowa State students, faculty, and staff have draw upon. As the college water supply dwindled,
worked to HELP fight the global pandemic have cases of typhoid fever developed on campus in mid-
appeared in newspapers and magazines and on October. And when the college literally drank its
television. Yet while the current outbreak isnew, wells dry several weeks later, President Beardshear
Iowa State has a long history of facing epidemics. found himself in a difficult situation. Without
These stories of sorrow and loss also show how sufficient water to flush the sewer system, the
the institution met the challenges of the time to college faced the very real threat of a major outbreak
keep the community safe. spell of tyfoid fever. After consulting the faculty,
Beardshear closed the college four weeks early, sent
Although Iowa Agricultural College as ISU was the students home, and canceled graduation exercises
then known) was founded in 1858, classrooms,
labs and dormitory facilities were not ready until
AU:
1869 when the first students arrived on campus.
Oxford
With the inception of classes, the college faced a
comma
constant public health concerns. Erly epidemics at
for
the young college were brought on by
consis- overcrowding, an inadequate water supply, and
tency poor sanitary conditions.

Overcrowding, water shortage, and

tainted Milk s
Overcrowding made it possible for all manner of
diseases to appear and spread easily. College
physician David Fairchild constantly fought small
outbreaks of disease in the 1880s and 1890s.
Fairchild reported 18 cases of measles and 23 cases
of German measles in 1888, 26 cases of mumps in
1889, and a further 24 cases of weasles in 1891.
m By 1999, enrollment had reached 830, with no
While mumps, measles, and colds were annoying,
they were not generally life-threatening. But by
1895, Iowa State began to face more significant
public health issues based around a shortage of
fresh waterskis. Because the founders never
envisioned a college of 300 students—let alone the
The near-catastrophe of 1895 led to allocations
from the legislature for a 2,215-foot-deep artesian
well and a 162,000-gallon steel water tank (Marston
Water Tower). While IAC’s water problems seemed
under control, overcrowded conditions on campus
only worsened as the turn of thecentury neared.
downturn in sight. The Trustees continued to
follow the college policy that demanded all
students (or at least as many as possible) live and
ate on campus. As Beardshear saw it in October
1899, overcrowding reached the point that “we
are full from cellar to garret.

Visions 16
 The overcrowded conditions greatly worried
the president, and he pushed the Board of
Trustees to allow students to live in the city of
ame s. However, as the Trustees were conscious
of the need to balance budgets, and the income
from room and board helped the bottom line,
they turned a deaf ear to Beardshears requests.
With little choice, Iowa State continued with
too many people in too small a space, and
conditions become favorable for public health
issues.
A global pandemic
The public health issues that had confronted
Iowa State before 1918 were specific to campus
and were a direct result of sanitary issues solved
relatively quickly by college authorities. But, as
the world became smaller and long-distance
travel more common, more people from
different parts of the country came to Iowa
u
State and broght with them more global public
health concerns.
During the last months of War World I in
1918, the world faced the outbreak of what
people at the time called the “Spanish Flu” or
AU: Not the H1N1 vims, and Iowa State was caught up
sure in a global pandemic. In the United States, the wf
disease may well have started in rural kansas.
what
But by March 1918 it had reached military
you're
training facilities in Fort Riley, and from there it
going spread rapidly. The flu was unusual in that its
for here. first waves attacked young people between 20
Victims? and 40 years of age; thus, college campuses and
military training facilities were among the
hardest hit locations. Over 24 weeks in 1918,
the influenza killed approximately 675,000
AME RI CANS.
The first cases at Iowa State College (as the
college was known by that time) appeared on
October 8, and the flu swept through the
community so quickly that within several weeks
there were 1,250 cases. The new college hospital
(now the Student Services Building) had just
opened that spring, and it was quickly filled to
capacity with sick studen ts and men from the
Visions
Student Army Training Corps (SATC). It was not
long before the floor of the State Gym, along with
boarding houses and fraternities close to campus,
were requisitioned as hospital space. One of the
women's dormitories was used to care for female
flu victims.
Classes were suspended, and the campus
t
was quarantined. Both students and Sate men
needed special passes to go into Ames. No one
could leave campus except in a family
emergency, and dining in town was forbidden.
Though the student newspaper claimed that the
influenza had been “literally stamped out” in it's
October 25 edition, such was hardly the case.
While the number of cases of flu had declined,
even by Armistice Day on November 11, their
were still over 100 cases in the hospital. The
influenza proved as deadly as it was disruptive to
both college and SATC affairs. More than 50 men
from the SATC corps died from the flu, while 28
from the student body fell victim to the disease by
the time the epidemic died down in late November
The SATC men who died are listed with the
World War I dead in the Memorial Union's Gold
Star Hall.
H1N1 influenza returned to Iowa State
wf
throughout the 1920s. In January 1920 the Ames
Daily Tribune took a positive attitude to the fact
that there were “probably something like 20 cases
of influenza in the city—all mild.” But by January
27, all dances had been banned, and Dr. C.G.
Tilden, ISC's physician, reported nearly 100 cases
at the college hospital. The ISC Student was not
blind to growing problem in and around campus.
the
17