Six Lessons for Online Editing Tests Using Microsoft Word

["Bonnie Granat" <bgranat -at- editors-writers -dot- info>]

I took two online editing tests within the last month.

On the first test, I did not perform adequately. On the second test, I
apparently did better. While I have not received feedback from the company
about the second test, one of the kind editors here has looked at it and
brought to my attention only the apparent existence of *too many* spaces
between some words and some typographic anomalies that I didn't notice
because I didn't set Word to show all characters, including optional
hyphens. No major flubs so far, so I am holding my breath.

In the meantime, after a nice nap, I have decided to post the lessons I have
learned from this little blip of activity in the universe.


______________________________________________
Six Lessons for Online Editing Tests  Using Microsoft Word


        Lesson 1:   Don't edit online.

That is, don't limit your editing to reading the document on the computer
screen and correcting errors there. Edit the document on the screen, but
then save it with a new file name, accept the changes, and print the
document. Now read the document and find the errors you missed when you
edited it on the computer screen. That's what I did on the second test. In
the course of six (6) iterations I discovered quite a number of things I'd
missed earlier or errors that I introduced myself.


        Lesson 2:   Make the minimum number of author queries.

Go with your gut. Even if you think that "deciduously" could have been meant
to be "decidedly" or "assiduously", choose the most likely intent of the
author and go with that. Unless it is in fact impossible for you to make a
decision, choose one.  Also make sure that your queries are themselves
error-free, and review any text for which you have created queries three
times to be sure that your question was not already answered in the text.


        Lesson 3:   Take your time.

Unless time is a factor that is *explicitly* stated by the test-giver, take
your time. Do not race to finish the test as quickly as you can. Returning a
test within three hours may be nice, but it is a worthless achievement if
you flub the test by making errors.


        Lesson 4:    Remind yourself that a test is a "test".

Errors are not forgiven.  That you have caught many errors and corrected
them does not lessen the impact of your missing crucial errors.  Don't
focus, as I did on the first test, on finding the problems with the words
only. Be concerned about how the document reads when you accept the changes
(I got fed up with Word at some point, I am beginning to remember, when I
noticed the spacing problem and went to the page with changes and attempted
to fix it but could not see *anything* that caused the problem).  Don't give
up on finding the source of the word-spacing problems you may have. Don't
assume that the test-giver isn't concerned with word spacing. What *was* I
thinking???????????Hey, can I blame my failures on Bill?? LOL.

If necessary, practice using the change-tracking feature in Word and test
yourself to be sure that you can produce error-free edits. I definitely
should have done this.



        Lesson 5:   Don't be ashamed to use the spelling checker as a
*final-stage* tool.

While you may feel that using the spelling checker is improper, your not
using it can cause you to miss things, and it is not improper to use it.
Use it when you've made the final pass on accepted changes online and you're
getting ready to return the completed test to the test-giver.




        Lesson 6:    Don't send the test when you're sure that you're ready
to e-mail it back to the test-giver.

Let it sit for 24 hours or more and do not look at it. Then read it with the
changes accepted both online and in print. If you are still satisfied, send
it.


___________________________________

I am confident that if I had realized these things earlier, my Blackwell
test would have been much better.

In the future, I shall follow these rules. I offer them to you all in the
hope that someone may be saved the pain of learning them by experience.  To
any of you who have been my mentors in the past and told me these lessons
already, what can I say? Perhaps my ego was inflated. "I am the invincible
Bonnie Granat, who catches every single error ever made in the history of
the world!"?  "I'll whip out this test in no time and show them how smart I
am."??

What's that saying? "Pride comes before the fall?" Indeed, it does. I know
how true that is.

If there are errors in this e-mail, please understand that I have obsessed
about possible errors only about 50% as much as I obsess over possible
errors in the simplest post I make, so in advance I am begging your pardon.


Bonnie Granat
http://www.editors-writers.info



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