Document editing and proofreading test

The documents

• Office memo (Administrative assistant): Correct a staff memo: a wrong date, three spelling mistakes, a repeated sentence and a missing line.
• Customer reply (Customer support): Tidy a reply to a customer: fix the order number, the refund amount, the tone of one sentence and two typos.
• Meeting minutes (Administrative assistant): Correct the minutes of a team meeting: names, a time, an action owner and the order of two items.
• Clinic letter (Medical secretary): Prepare a clinic letter for signature: patient details, a follow-up period and medical spelling.
• Lease clause (Legal assistant): Revise two clauses of a lease: the rent, the notice period, defined terms and a cross-reference.
• Job advertisement (Human resources): Edit a job posting before it goes live: salary, hours, a requirement and inclusive wording.
• School newsletter (School office): Proofread a short school newsletter: dates, a name, punctuation and a missing word.
• Report summary (Office manager): Edit the summary of a quarterly report: figures, a percentage, a heading and one sentence to remove.

Editing is a different skill from typing

Many office roles spend more time changing text than typing it from scratch: fixing a date, correcting names in minutes, updating a figure in a contract, removing a sentence that should not be there. Editing tests measure whether you find the right place quickly, change exactly what was asked, and leave the rest alone.

How it is checked

Each instruction is checked against your finished document: the new wording must be there and the old wording gone. Your whole document is also compared with the finished version by edit distance, so accidental changes elsewhere lower your accuracy. At the end you see each instruction marked done or not done, and a word-by-word comparison.

Eight documents

The documents cover common office work: a staff memo, a customer reply, meeting minutes, a clinic letter, lease clauses, a job advertisement, a school newsletter and a report summary. All names, figures and organisations are fictional.