Grammar, Spelling, and Mechanics in the Target Language
Control the mechanics graders can see
Grammar, spelling, and mechanics errors are the most visible defects in a target text and the easiest to eliminate. Candidates should command agreement (subject–verb, noun–adjective, pronoun–antecedent), case and preposition government, tense and aspect in reported and conditional structures, article and classifier usage, and word order in questions, negatives, and subordinate clauses.
Orthography and punctuation are language-specific
Do not assume source conventions transfer. Check:
- Quotation marks: English uses “ ” or ‘ ’; French uses « »; German uses „ “. Placement of commas and periods inside or outside the quotation differs by language.
- Numbers and dates: decimal comma versus point (1.234,56 vs 1,234.56); ambiguous date order (3/4/2024); thousands separators; currency placement.
- Hyphenation and capitalisation: compound nouns, titles, headings, months, nationalities, and religious terms vary by language and by style guide.
- Spacing: non-breaking spaces before certain punctuation in French; no space before a colon in English.
Pick one authority and stay with it
Choose a single style guide and a single spelling variant (for example, US or UK English) for the whole document, and apply it to names, abbreviations, and numerals as well as to prose.
Trap
Mechanical errors in numbers are accuracy errors: a misplaced decimal point or a transposed date changes the meaning. Proofread figures separately from prose and re-check every unit conversion.
Rule of thumb
Read the target text once only for mechanics - punctuation, agreement, capitals, numbers - without looking at the source. Defects that survive a source-comparison read often die in this pass.