Let us take a look at some common editing
marks used in proofreading English writing.
Adding letters/words (
, ^)
Consider the sentence:
This is a pen.
We can add some letters to change it
to: "This is a pencil."
This is a pen
.
We can use the same mark to add words to a sentence:
This is a  pen. |
 |
This is a blue pen. |
We can also use the "carrot" marks above or below the
lines to add letters/words to a sentence:
This is a pen
.
Note 1: When we want to add small punctuation
marks such as periods, colons, semicolons, etc., we
circle them to distinguish them from stray marks. For
example:
 |
|
This is Mr. Smith. |
A regular period mark is added (not a period with a
circle around it).
Note 2: When we want to add a space,
we use the "sharp" mark. For example:
 |
|
He likes apples a lot. |
Removing letters/words (
)
To remove the extra 'n' in this sentence,
we use a line with a loop at the end as follows:
 |
|
This is a pen. |
Do not use a plain line (it has a different
meaning, see below). We can also
use this mark to remove words from
a sentence. For example:
 |
|
This is a pen. |
Note 1: To remove spaces, we
use the "chain" mark. For example:
 |
|
She cannot come. |
Replacing (removing and then adding) single letters
When we want to change a single letter, it is not
good practice to use both the remove and add marks.
That is:
In this case, we do the following:
 |
|
pin |
Switching letters/words (
)
We can switch letters and words in a sentence as follows:
 |
|
This is a blue pen. |
 |
|
This pen is blue. |
Changing cases (
, 
)
We can change lowercase letters to uppercase and uppercase letters to
lowercase as follows:
Check spelling (sp)
A simple spelling error can be indicated with the "check spelling"
mark:
This sentence should be corrected to: "We study about the
government and environment."
New paragraph (
)
We use this mark when we want to start a new paragraph.
For example:
is rewritten as:
We explain the procedure below.
First, we must collect...
Ignore marks (STET)
When we want to restore edited text to its original state,
we use the "STET" keyword. For example:
Here, we should ignore the mark to remove "wonderfully"
(i.e., the sentence stays in its original form: "He was a wonderfully fine boy.").
[ Back ]
