Exercises
in Grammar, Usage
and Associated Press Style
Note: Newsroom 101 will not continue to be free. The exercises on this site have been free for 8 years, and more than 6.2 million of them have been completed by visitors. The effort and expense of maintaining the material require us to start charging for it. Starting in the summer of 2012, expect to pay a modest amount to use these exercises. Details are being worked out and will be announced here.
An important recent change: The AP adopted the spelling "email" on March 18, 2011, replacing the old spelling, "e-mail." I have changed this spelling wherever I found it in these exercises -- in hundreds of files. If you find any I missed, please contact me
. Other e-words continue to use a hyphen (such as e-commerce and e-book).
Hopefully. In another update, the AP now accepts "hopefully" as correct. Hopefully, older editors will not despair over this change.
Newsroom
101 offers more than 2,000 self-instructional exercises for
journalists, writers, editors, students and others who want to review
(or learn) journalistic language, as governed by the Associated Press
Stylebook. In the column to the right, you can see how many exercises visitors to this site have completed.
The Newsroom101.com site is the work of one
individual -- Dr. Gerald Grow, who created and maintains the site by
himself. (You could probably tell that by looking at it, right?)
This site originated with a set of exercises
developed by Ron Hartung when he was with the Tallahassee
Democrat -- where he was editor, grammar consultant, newsroom
coach,
intern mentor and author of the weekly "Traffic Doctor"column.
With his cooperation, Ron's
exercises were edited, adapted for student use and put online in 2004
by Gerald -- then professor of
journalism at Florida A&M University (now retired). Ron's quizzes
became the Newsroom exercises on
the site, and Gerald added the rest of the material as he developed it
for use in his journalism classes -- tripling the number of exercises.
Newsroom101.com
was created as a public service, to improve journalistic writing in print, on the Web and wherever else it appears. Donations have never covered the cost of this
site, so please support it with a donation through Paypal, using the link below -- or at
least pay us with
.
Short
Instructions
Make sure your browser is set to allow pop-ups
from newsroom101.com. This tutorial on pop-up blockers may help.
Sign in when asked.
Stay with each question until you click the
correct answer.
When there is explanatory feedback, read it.
At the end of each set of exercises, you should
receive a Thanks page with your score.
If you are using Internet
Explorer 7 and having trouble seeing the questions in the
quizzes, read this. Once
you get Explorer set up properly, the exercises on this site work
well. Firefox works well when set to accept pop-ups from
newsroom101.com.
Newsroom 101™
Exercises
(about 770 items) The original Newsroom exercises were developed by Ron
Hartung
from the kinds of errors made by journalists and interns working at a
daily newspaper. They reflect his "Grammar Man" persona and charming,
humorous style.
Confusable
Words Around 200 frequently confused words, arranged in
groups by alphabetical order.
Word
Usage
(fewer/less, homed/honed, pored/poured, etc.) Around 200 words that are
frequently used incorrectly, presented randomly.
Choose the Right
Expression (49 items). Exercises in common
expressions and cliches.
Who and Whom
Around 50 questions on who and whom. You can choose all
the questions, or a random selection of 10
questions.
Learning
Lay and Lie. When you
are serious about mastering lay and lie, here's where you can do it.
Five explanatory sections, plus nearly 300 practice items targeted to
each step of the explanation.
Dropped Word Endings
(44 items -- use(d) to, suppose(d) to, etc. Nearly all these examples
come from student work.) Here is an experimental form of
this same exercise.
Get
Rid of Get.
Rewrite the examples to replace forms of "get" with words that express
the precise meaning.
For Teachers:Recommendations
on how to use this site with your students.
Introduction
These
self-instructional exercises are based on issues of grammar, usage and
AP style that arose at a daily newspaper and in a course in journalism.
They are offered here for journalists, professional writers, college
students, high-school students and others who are learning or
reviewing journalistic language.
Teachers are invited to
assign students to practice these exercises, but there is no provision
for a teacher to track student performance.
Please note: Many of
the exercises apply to English in general, but some of them apply only
to journalistic language as governed by The
Associated Press Stylebookand may differ from
standard English usage.
When an explanation
refers to "the official dictionary," that is Webster's New
World College Dictionary, the AP's first reference for
anything not covered in the Stylebook itself.
There is some
repetition in the topics covered. This is partly due to the way these
exercises were developed, in pieces, over several years, in response to
the writing problems of journalism students, interns and journalists.
It is also due in part to the fact that certain grammatical issues keep
recurring, and we want to make sure they are well covered.
A
Few Things You Need to Know
(1) Pop-ups. For
the exercises to work, you must set your browser to allow
pop-ups from the newsroom101.com site. This should be simple.
See your browser's help file for instructions.
If you are using Google
Toolbar, you may need to click on the Toolbar's pop-up icon for
instructions.
(2) Correct
Answers. To see the feedback and
to receive your correct score, be sure to click the correct answer to
each question, even if you have to try more than once. When an exercise
contains useful feedback, it is usually delivered when you click the
correct answer.
(3) The
Grammar Habit. Grammar, usage
and AP style are not so much knowledge as they are skills.
They are habits. You need to be able to use them confidently,
correctly, without thinking -- the way you know how to walk or tie your
shoes.
The only way you can
gain this level of skill is through practice. Practice! Practice!
Practice! These exercises are designed to provide you with practice.
Of course you will
continue to look things up. Of course you will continue to pause and
think about things like "lay" and "lie." But make your goal, as much as
you can, to make grammar, usage, and AP style automatic.
Make them a habit. A good habit.
News: Two-thirds of SAT Writing
Score
based on Multiple-Choice
According to a New York Times
article by Tamar Lewin on Sept. 3, 2006, two-thirds of the writing
score on the SAT comes from multiple-choice questions on grammar and
usage.
Instructions
Each practice exercise below
consists of about 10 multiple-choice questions. Many give feedback that
helps explain the correct answer.
Take these quiz-like
exercises to practice the materials, then review groups of these
exercises by taking the Review Exercises linked below.
How to practice: Practice
each set until you can earn at least a 90% on it every time. Use the
review quizzes every five sets to test your learning.
Set out to notice, learn and
remember each point of grammar or style. Don't perform these exercises
on automatic, in a perfunctory manner or while you are surrounded by
distractions. Focus. Imagine you are learning to juggle with knives.
Grammar is sharp and slightly dangerous; it can hurt you if you don't
handle it right.
This site is not affiliated with
the Associated Press or with the publishers of the AP Stylebook, and
they are not responsible for its contents.
NEW: Courses at
Newsroom101.com
A related service, Courses at Newsroom101.com,
provides a
streamlined and updated version of this material designed for use in
courses and industry training.
Minimum criteria
and branching. Delivered on the Moodle platform, the paid
version of Newsroom101.com makes use of branching to require students
to attain a
certain score on each exercise before being allowed to continue.
Students must then attain minimum score on periodic reviews of the
material in order to receive a grade for each unit.
Grades and
activity reports. The Moodle course provides students
and teachers with grades and activity reports. It can be accessed
online through our server, using any platform.
For
information. Teachers and trainers can obtain further
information on Courses at
Newsroom101.com by using this
link.
Please report any errors
in the quizzes or problems with the quiz software. But before
you report that the quizzes do not appear, make sure you have set your
browser to accept pop-ups from this site! Then try the quizzes again.
Copyright notice. This
material is copyright 2004 - 2010 by Gerald Grow, but at this time you
may practice the exercises online as
they are presented here, without additional permission. However, do not
copy the materials on this site, host them
elsewhere, adapt them, publish them, reproduce them in any other form,
or use them for a commercial purpose without explicit written
permission from the copyright holder. All rights reserved, including
the coming-of-age save-the-world active-verb film version in which
the author co-stars with Angelina Jolie.
These online quizzes were created using
the spectacularly wonderful Hot
Potatoes software.
Click this logo to make a donation
through your PayPal account.
Or go directly to your account at paypal.com.
This information is for people who find these
exercises useful enough that they want to make a modest donation to
help pay the cost of keeping them online:
If you want to donate through your
PayPal account, you can click on the logo to the left for a secure
transaction. Or you can go to Paypal.Com and send $2 to ggrow
[at-sign] newsroom101.com. Replace [at-sign] with @.
h
NEW: Courses at
Newsroom101™.com
A related service, Courses at Newsroom101™.com,
provides a
streamlined and updated version of this material designed for use in
courses and industry training.
Minimum
criteria and branching. Delivered on the Moodle platform, the
paid version of Newsroom101™.com makes
use of branching to require students to attain a
certain score on each exercise before being allowed to continue.
Students must then attain a minimum score on
periodic reviews of the
material in order to receive a grade for each unit.
Grades and
activity reports. The Moodle course provides students
and teachers with grades and activity reports. It can be accessed
online through our server, using any platform.
For
information. Teachers and trainers can obtain further
information on Courses at
Newsroom101™.com by using this
link.
Newsroom
101.com usage. In the period between Oct. 2006 (when the
count started), and May 2012, Newsroom101.com served up more than 6,269,320
free exercises on grammar, usage, spelling and journalistic style, by actual
record of completed
quizzes.
This is equivalent to the number of
exercises
that would be completed in more than 262 semester-long grammar classes
of 15 students each.
The site operated for two years
before the count started.
Disclaimer