A friend of mine is applying for a customer service job and will be given a test on basic proofreading, spelling, grammar, punctuation, etc., skills. From my experience, her writing skills are above average, but she’s nervous, maybe because she’s a recent immigrant and has more experience with British-based Indian conventions. Does anyone know whether there are sample tests available online somewhere?
Lots of tests here: http://grammar.ccc.commnet.edu/grammar/quiz_list.htm
Copyediting and proofreading tests here: http://www.sagepub.com/journalFreelancers.nav
Project Gutenberg’s Distributed Proofreaders have proofreading tests.
The European site includes “more exotic” languages (mostly, those which require Unicode).
If your friend doesn’t need it “for yesterday”, she can sign up and do some work on newbie projects. She can indicate “feedback please” at the bottom and the reviewer will tell her how she did; this can take one or two weeks though, until the project gets moved to round 2 and her pages come up. Reviewers for newbie projects are always supposed to give feedback, but actually they’re less likely to do so if the work was perfect or nearly so.
IME, while the English of Indian coworkers often gives me trouble, their grammar and spelling don’t. Yeah, they write colour where I write color, so? It’s correct!
Thanks, guys!
Generally speaking, they may be correct, but when you’re working for a publishing company, knowing and following the mandated style (in which “colour” is not correct) is a job requirement.