English Usage, Punctuation, and Proofreading
What this domain tests
This domain tests the editorial layer of reporting: punctuation that preserves meaning, capitalization conventions in legal text, number and date style, and a proofreading method that catches errors of sense as well as spelling. Punctuation decisions in a transcript are editorial judgments and must be defensible.
Core rules
- Restrictive versus nonrestrictive clauses. 'The plaintiff's expert who examined the records testified' (restrictive, no commas) identifies which expert; commas around the clause signal that there is only one.
- That versus which. Use 'that' for restrictive clauses and reserve 'which' for nonrestrictive clauses set off by commas.
- Quotation marks and terminal punctuation. Periods and commas go inside closing quotation marks; question marks and exclamation points go inside only when they belong to the quoted matter.
- Capitalization. 'Court' is capitalized when naming the tribunal in the immediate proceeding; 'court' is lowercased when generic. 'Your Honor' is capitalized in direct address. Party designations are lowercased outside a caption unless the text treats them as a defined name.
- Numbers and dates. Follow one system throughout the transcript: numerals for money and times ($4,500; 9:15 a.m.), spelled-out or numeral forms for small counts chosen once and applied everywhere.
- Hyphenate compound modifiers before a noun ('20-year-old contract,' 'well-known rule') but not after ('the rule is well known').
- Possessives. 'Jones's' for the singular, 'the Joneses'' for the plural.
Worked example
Draft line: The plaintiff's expert, who had examined the records, testified that the standard of care, was breached. The second comma is wrong: it separates the subject 'standard of care' from its verb and alters the sentence's readability. Correct output keeps the first pair of commas (nonrestrictive clause about the expert) and deletes the second. Reasoning: punctuation is inserted from syntax, not from the speaker's pauses, because a pause before 'was' is a breath, not a boundary.
Traps that cost marks
- Over-punctuating toward the sound of speech rather than the grammar of the sentence.
- Using 'which' for restrictive clauses.
- Informal spellings that slip past spell-check: alright, irregardless, judgement.
- Recasting quoted material while 'cleaning it up.'
- Proofreading forward only, which lets repeated and transposed words survive; read a second pass from the end for spelling.