proofreading exercises

Proofreading Exercises

Learn how to proofread by working through our library of proofreading exercises.

Post author By Duncan Croker
Post date August 24, 2020
4 Comments on Proofreading Exercises

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Bookmark this page – we upload new proofreading exercises regularly.

Easy Exercises
Medium Exercises
Hard Exercises

In a digital world, it’s more important than ever to make sure your communications are error-free – you don’t want to be responsible for a press release that goes viral because of an awkward misspelling.

That’s why we’ve put together this collection of proofreading exercises to test your skills. Work your way up through the difficulty levels until you feel confident that you’ve mastered the required proofreading skills.

Download each exercise PDF to get started, then print it out or copy-paste it into Microsoft Word; once you’ve finished editing, cross-check the mistakes you found with the relevant answer sheet.

Answer sheets follow AP Stylebook conventions (where appropriate) and use British spelling. New proofreading exercises will be regularly added to this page. Note that the original sources contain the correct text – all mistakes have been added in for the purposes of the exercises.

Easy Proofreading Exercise 1

Exercise details.

Format: News Article

Source: ‘NSW Transport Minister Andrew Constance hits back after claims Sydney ferries won’t fit under bridges.’

Easy Proofreading Exercise 2

Source: ‘Now is the time to buy in the Melbourne property market.’

Easy Proofreading Exercise 3

Format: Blog Post

Source: How to Find the Noosa Fairy Pools

Easy Proofreading Exercise 4

Source: Marketing for Small Businesses

Medium Proofreading Exercise 1

Format: Annual Report

Source: Rio Tinto Annual Report 2019 – Strategic Report

Medium Proofreading Exercise 2

Source: The 11 Best Foods to Support Your Immune System

Medium Proofreading Exercise 3

Format: Online Article

Source: A Better Way to Map Brand Strategy

Medium Proofreading Exercise 4

Format: Online Publication

Source: Telstra s 87B Undertaking

Tactical Marketing Tips, Weekly

Read past issues here

Hard Proofreading Exercise 1

Format: Academic Journal

Source: Passafaro, P. (2020). Attitudes and Tourists’ Sustainable Behavior: An Overview of the Literature and Discussion of Some Theoretical and Methodological Issues. Journal of Travel Research, 59 (4), 579–601. DOI: 10.1177/0047287519851171

Hard Proofreading Exercise 2

Source: Demirkol, S., & Cifci, I. (2020). Delving into the Role of Celebrity Chefs and Gourmets in Culinary Destination Marketing. European Journal of Tourism Research, 26 , 2603. https://ejtr.vumk.eu/index.php/about/article/view/1934

Other Resources for Improving Your Proofreading

Tags Proofreading

By Duncan Croker

Duncan is a copywriter with a background in editing and storytelling. He loves collaborating with brands big and small, and thrives on the challenges of hard marketing.

4 comments on “Proofreading Exercises”

This is great. It’s really helpful to see practical exercises. Thanks for putting this together!

Fantastic exercises, thank you for providing these!

These exercises have been really great. Thank you. I’m using them with my A level student in preparation for University where proofreading will be essential! The content is just right for his interest level too and short enough to keep his interest.

Hi Geraldine, it’s great to hear you and your student are finding the exercises helpful. We’ll hopefully add some more in the near future.

Comments are closed.

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Can you ace this basic proofreading quiz.

Posted by Phil Jamieson Mar 22, 2018 7:30:00 AM

Take our quiz to test your basic proofreading knowledge and see if you can catch every single typo. See if you can get every question right and ace the entire quiz. And don’t look for any of the answers online, so you can really step up to the challenge!

Let us know how you did in the comments below. Good luck!

Topics: proofreading quiz , typos, typographic errors

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Proofreading Tips

Writing Samples to Help You Practice Proofreading

Jul 27, 2022
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At Knowadays , we love to help you improve your proofreading skills. So today, we’re giving you three short passages of text to practice on. They are written in American English.

Just copy and paste each passage into a Microsoft Word document and make any changes you feel are necessary (focusing on clear errors rather than style, phrasing, etc., for this exercise). After that, you can compare the changes you made to our suggestions further down the page.

Sample 1: Excerpt from a Blog Post

Dream interpretation is a skill that any one can acquire. It is the art of divining knowledge that is buried in our sub-conscious. It can help us know our selves and solves problems. What more could you ask in a facility that’s freely to your disposal whenever you fell asleep. All you really need is a pen and a paper. Get as relaxed as you can before bed (some book recommend meditation, breathing exercises, or yoga), and then repeat to your self, “I will remember my dreams, and after each dream I will wake up and write them down.” Then, when you wake up, immediately write down your dream. When you come to interpret the dream, look at the events, objects, peoples, colors, and etc., and ask yourself what they do mean to you. This is your own sub-conscious, so your personal interpretation is vial. Once you have done this, you can consult a book or online database of dreams symbols.

Sample 2: Personal Statement

I am a highly driven Manager with over ten years experience. My hands-on approach has led to many significant contract wins. My out standing networking skills have secured several important clients, and my ability to develop professional relationships has resulted in a 22% percent increase in sales for my organization. I employed modernist management methods, tailored to insure maximum productivity. I was also directly involved in the development of strategies that enhanced work flows and reduced redundancy through the organization. I am currently seeking a new challenge that will benefit from my meticulous attention to detail, and and friendly professional manor.

Sample 3: Paragraph from an Essay

In the minds of many scholars and parents, the picture-book has long been soley for children It is well-known that children find images more immediately and naturally accessible than text. As is so often the case, though, it benefits the scholar (and, indeed, the parent) to have a healthy suspicion of so-called well-known facts. The statement has an element of truth inasmuch as picture of a tree should in some respects resemble a tree, where as the word “tree” is a purely arbitrary symbol; however, this should not lead us to assume a natural association between the iconic representation and the tree it self. The addressee – the child – must have some concept of the appearance of a tree. He must also understand, to some degree, how pictures work: that he is looking, not at lines and blocks of color, nor at a piece of paper, but at image intended to represent something seperate from the page. There are, therefore, less differences between words and images than one might except.

Dream interpretation is a skill that any one anyone can acquire. It is the art of divining knowledge that is buried in our sub-conscious. subconscious . It can help us know our selves, ourselves and solves solve problems. What more could you ask in from a facility that’s freely to at your disposal whenever you fell fall asleep . ? All you really need is a pen and a paper. Get as relaxed as you can before bed (some book books recommend meditation, breathing exercises, or yoga), and then repeat to your self yourself , “I will remember my dreams, and after each dream, I will wake up and write them down.” Then, when you wake up, immediately write down your dream. When you come to interpret the dream, look at the events, objects, peoples people , colors, and etc., and ask yourself what they do mean to you. This is your own sub-conscious subconscious , so your personal interpretation is vial vital . Once you have done this, you can consult a book or an online database of dream symbols.

Some of the errors in this passage suggest that the author’s first language may not be English. In some places, for example, the author has separated single words into two parts (e.g., any one ). There are also places where the noun and verb disagree (e.g., some book recommend ) and some misused prepositions (e.g., to your disposal ). These are common errors among writers who speak English as an additional language.

I am a highly driven Manager manager with over ten years years’ experience. My hands-on approach has led to many significant contract wins. My out standing outstanding networking skills have secured several important clients, and my ability to develop professional relationships has resulted in a 22% percent increase in sales for my organization. I employed modernist modern management methods, tailored to insure ensure maximum productivity. I was also directly involved in the development of strategies that enhanced work flows workflows and reduced redundancy through throughout the organization. I am currently seeking a new challenge that will benefit from my meticulous attention to detail , and and friendly professional manor manner .

Here, the author has cited their meticulous attention to detail, but they have also made some noticeable mistakes. These include using insure to mean ensure , redundancy (i.e., using the percent symbol and the word percent together), confusing the words modern (i.e., up to date) and modernist (i.e., related to modernism), a homophone-based error where manor and manner were mixed up, and an unnecessary comma plus repetition of and in the final sentence. Such errors would undermine the author’s message, so they will need to be corrected!

In the minds of many scholars and parents, the picture-book picture book has long been soley solely for children . It is well-known well known that children find images more immediately and naturally accessible than text. As is often the case, though, it benefits the scholar (and, indeed, the parent) to have a healthy suspicion of so-called well-known facts. The statement has an element of truth inasmuch as the picture of a tree should in some respects resemble a tree, where as whereas the word “tree” is a purely arbitrary symbol; however, this should not lead us to assume a natural association between the iconic representation and the tree it self itself . The addressee – – – the child – must have some concept of the appearance of a tree. They must also understand, to some degree, how pictures work: that they are looking not at lines and blocks of color, nor at a piece of paper, but at an image intended to represent something seperate separate from the page. There are, therefore, less fewer differences between words and images than one might except expect .

This passage misused hyphens in various places. One key issue is the hyphenation of well-known : this is fine when the word precedes the term it is modifying (i.e., “well-known” facts ). But this term is not hyphenated otherwise, so we have removed the hyphen when it is used in the sentence starting It is well known that children… in this passage.

Another interesting case is the use of less in place of fewer . This traditional “error” is now so widespread that it is considered acceptable in some situations (e.g., on signs for checkout lines saying 10 items or less ). But in formal writing, such as an essay, it would need correcting.

There were also some typos (e.g., misspelling solely as soley ; use of a hyphen in place of a parenthetical en dash; the misspelling of separate ; the confusion of except and expect ). And there were two sentences where articles were missing (e.g., inasmuch as picture and but at image ).

Becoming a Proofreader

How did you do? Did your edits match the ones we’ve provided above? Of course, in some cases, there are other changes that could have been made to address the issues in the text: e.g., rather than adding an apostrophe after years in ten years experience , we could have rephrased to say ten years of experienc e. But as long as you identified the problems and made relevant changes, you’ll have done the job required!

For more practice passages and a wealth of information about proofreading, try our Becoming A Proofreader course. With a free trial available, you can start learning today. See how Becoming A Proofreader could help you develop a rewarding career in proofreading!

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Printable proofreading worksheets for building grammar, spelling, and writing skills. Each file has a short paragraph on it. Students read carefully and look for errors in capitalization, spelling, and punctuation.