Accuracy, Error Correction and Proofreading
This domain tests whether you can name, avoid and detect the errors that examiners count, and whether you know the correction conventions of a typewriter as against a word processor.
The counted error types
Omission, addition, substitution, transposition, faulty spacing, matra and conjunct faults, and punctuation. Boards commonly distinguish a full mistake (a wrong or missing word) from a half mistake (a minor matra or spacing slip); a half-mistake habit repeated thirty times is worth more than one bold error, so know the current scheme.
Correction conventions
On a typewriter you cannot erase. Overtyping, scribbling or whitening is penalised, so the correct response is to leave the error and continue; some boards permit a single clean strike-through, which the instruction sheet will state. In a word processor, correct before submission and then remove the leftover characters; a late Ctrl+Z can undo an entire paragraph rather than one word.
A proofreading routine for the last two minutes
- Read the final three lines first - they are the most rushed.
- Scan vertically for ि/ी, ु/ू, ं/ँ and for reph.
- Confirm every sentence closes with । and not a full stop.
- Check that numerals are consistent - Devanagari or Arabic, never both.
- Verify paragraph breaks and that no line has run past the margin.
Worked example
The passage reads परिश्रम; the typed copy shows परिशम. Reasoning: the श was substituted (a substitution error) and the र् reph was dropped. Reph omissions cluster in a small set of words, so proofread by targeting reph-heavy items - कार्य, पूर्व, परिश्रम, निर्माण - rather than reading the passage for meaning.
Traps
Reading for sense instead of stroke by stroke; correcting during the speed run; trusting a spell checker to catch matra faults, which it usually does not; failing to check punctuation because the words look right.