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Part C: Editing and Proofreading Your Documents
This part of the handbook contains advice on editing your documents for grammar, punctuation, and mechanics. If your organization or professional field has a style guide with different recommendations about grammar and usage, you should of course follow those guidelines.
Your instructor might use the following abbreviations to refer you to specific topics in the text and in Parts C and D of this Appendix.
| Abbreviation | Topic | Abbreviation | Topic |
| abbr | abbreviation | run | run-on sentence |
| adj | adjective (ESL) | sent | sentence part (ESL) |
| adv | adverb (ESL) | sub | subordinating clause (ESL) |
| agr p/a | pronoun-antecedent agreement | t | verb tense |
| agr s/v | subject-verb agreement (ESL) | vb | verb tense (ESL) |
| art | article (a, an, the) (ESL) | . | period |
| cap | capitalization | ! | exclamation point |
| comp | comparison of items | ? | question mark |
| cond | conditional sentence (ESL) | , | comma |
| coor | coordinating clause (ESL) | : | colon |
| cs | comma splice | — | dash |
| frag | sentence fragment | ( ) | parentheses |
| help | helping verb and main verb (ESL) | - | hyphen |
| inf | infinitive form of the verb (ESL) | ’ | apostrophe |
| -ing | -ing form of the verb (ESL) | “ ” | quotation marks |
| ital | italics (underlining) | . . . | ellipses |
| num | number | < > | angle brackets |
| omit | omitted word or words (ESL) | [ ] | square brackets |
| ref | ambiguous pronoun reference | ||
| rep | repeated word (ESL) |