Can you write proper English under pressure?

November 18, 2013 • 8:38 am

Well, I thought I could, as I have to write these posts between 6 and 8 a.m. every day, and there’s precious little time for revising.  Then reader Diane G. called my attention to a timed online test at usvsth3m called “You can’t write proper English under pressure.” What a challenge.

There are eight tests, each consisting of about ten timed questions, and you don’t have much time to judge a sentence as either “right” or “wrong”.  An example:

Picture 5

That looks easy, right?  Well it is, but things become harder when the time to answer becomes shorter, as it does within each section.  As Diane noted:

A bit harder than it looks in some sections.  Beware of the autoplay music;  I turned it off immediately, though that was probably supposed to be part of the challenge.

At the end, I thought I did pretty well, but was horrified to see a big sign on the screen giving the final judgment: “You can’t write proper English.” I failed! I am totally humiliated.

Click on the link above, use your mouse to judge sentences right or wrong, and see if you can do better. Then report the results below.

69 thoughts on “Can you write proper English under pressure?”

    1. I suck worser.

      I cannot even find a book in a library using simple Library of Congress classification, not that anyone (scientist) actually goes to libraries anymore.

    1. Same here.

      I suspect some levels are easy for a 2nd language user (spelling, say), but I sucked on level 2.

  5. I’m pretty sure I will suck at this with my homophone issues and being out of practice. In my day I would’ve rocked this but I swear constant migraines have put lesions on my brain.

    1. That sucks, Diana.

      I used to get occasional migraines, but Maxalt Smelt worked wonders for me.

      Can’t your doc prescribe some serious pain med for you?

      1. My doc gave me Relpax which works great if you take it when you get the symptoms. I find I’m pain free in half an hour but I still have all the dizzy cognition issues.

        1. I almost wanted to recommend you some “alternative”*cough* medicin for the pain, but that most likely won’t help you with cognitive dizziness. 🙂

  8. It lies, I can’t write English correctly at the best of times let alone under pressure. I passed but that’s ten minutes of my life not coming back any time soon!

  9. I eventually got to level 8 but on my first attempt I bombed out at level 3! I think level 7 was the hardest for me. I had to repeat it 3 or 4 times.

  10. I passed the test — somewhat to my surprise, in that I had to repeat levels several times (once through genuine error, the others because, in my early-morning blear, I was clicking Right when I meant to click Wrong, etc.).

    2. I actually kept crapping out by clicking the wrong button. I think it’s more of a problem with synapses & motor skills for me than anything else.

  13. Well, I passed, but I find the bum’s rush unrealistic.

    I’m very good at copy editing; I was the copy editor for my HS yearbook, and I’ve been doing it ever since in one form or another.

    It doesn’t take that long to proofread for me, so a ticking clock is a distraction rather than a help. I didn’t turn the music on, either, for the same reason.

    I have more of an issue with a “spell” checker that can’t spell, and “grammar” checkers that are incorrect. I turn those off, too. L

  14. My father was a spelling expert & wrote a dissertation on it. He said the WORST thing you can do is give wrong examples as it becomes a fixed picture in your head then you find it hard to ignore that image.

    1. That’s true for a lot of skills. Negative examples have to be used very sparingly, because people may remember the example, but the first thing forget is that it was wrong or why.

  15. I got to the last level, and at the end was pronounced unable to write proper English. I’m not sure whether that’s an assessment of only the last level or of the entire test.

    1. I had to retake level 8. I’m pretty sure you must have passed the preceding levels to get there.

      1. Yeah, as soon as you miss one thing, it stops & proclaims you an English failure. It would have been more entertaining if it had added Monty Python taunts, “You don’t frighten us, English pig dogs. Go and boil your bottoms, you sons of a silly person.”

        Now *that* would at least amuse me after my failure.

  16. Someone should point out that writing well and “writing proper English” are two completely different things.

  17. I’m not even going to try. I was a better speller in 7th grade, though my both my active and passive vocabularies are larger now. If speed is an issue, I know I’m worse now. Much of my reading now includes student papers and research papers written by non-native speakers and native speakers whose English skills aren’t what they should be. It has taken a toll on my own spelling and grammar, which had always relied heavily on what “sounded or looked right”.

  20. The following is all you really need to know. Thanks to Wikipedia.

    How to Write Good

    The first set of rules was written by Frank L. Visco and originally published in the June 1986 issue of Writers’ digest.
    The second set of rules is derived from William Safire’s Rules for Writers.
    My several years in the word game have learnt me several rules:
    Avoid Alliteration. Always.
    Prepositions are not words to end sentences with.
    Avoid cliches like the plague. (They�re old hat.)
    Employ the vernacular.
    Eschew ampersands & abbreviations, etc.
    Parenthetical remarks (however relevant) are unnecessary.
    It is wrong to ever split an infinitive.
    Contractions aren�t necessary.
    Foreign words and phrases are not apropos.
    One should never generalize.
    Eliminate quotations. As Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, �I hate quotations. Tell me what you know.�
    Comparisons are as bad as cliches.
    Don�t be redundant; don�t use more words than necessary; it�s highly superfluous.
    Profanity sucks.
    Be more or less specific.
    Understatement is always best.
    Exaggeration is a billion times worse than understatement.
    One word sentences? Eliminate.
    Analogies in writing are like feathers on a snake.
    The passive voice is to be avoided.
    Go around the barn at high noon to avoid colloquialisms.
    Even if a mixed metaphor sings, it should be derailed.
    Who needs rhetorical questions?
    Parenthetical words however must be enclosed in commas.
    It behooves you to avoid archaic expressions.
    Avoid archaeic spellings too.
    Don’t repeat yourself, or say again what you have said before.
    Don’t use commas, that, are not, necessary.
    Do not use hyperbole; not one in a million can do it effectively.
    Never use a big word when a diminutive alternative would suffice.
    Subject and verb always has to agree.
    Placing a comma between subject and predicate, is not correct.
    Use youre spell chekker to avoid mispeling and to catch typograhpical errers.
    Don’t repeat yourself, or say again what you have said before.
    Use the apostrophe in it’s proper place and omit it when its not needed.
    Don’t never use no double negatives.
    Poofread carefully to see if you any words out.
    Hopefully, you will use words correctly, irregardless of how others use them.
    Eschew obfuscation.
    No sentence fragments.
    Don’t indulge in sesquipedalian lexicological constructions.
    A writer must not shift your point of view.
    Don’t overuse exclamation marks!!
    Place pronouns as close as possible, especially in long sentences, as of 10 or more words, to their antecedents.
    Writing carefully, dangling participles must be avoided.
    If any word is improper at the end of a sentence, a linking verb is.
    Avoid trendy locutions that sound flaky.
    Everyone should be careful to use a singular pronoun with singular nouns in their writing.
    Always pick on the correct idiom.
    The adverb always follows the verb.
    Take the bull by the hand and avoid mixing metaphors.
    If you reread your work, you can find on rereading a great deal of repetition can be by rereading and editing.
    And always be sure to finish what

  21. I think it would be fairer to say “You can’t proofread proper English under pressure.” And yeah, I can’t. 😛

    1. Particularly with that thing going across the background and that horrendous din in your ears.

    2. I can’t proofread under good conditions. I hate doing it. I’d rather gloss over things….I’d be great at “glossreading”.

      1. 😀

        I’m nearly the opposite; sometimes I can’t NOT proofread, even when there’s no call for it and I’m only being annoying.

  22. Made it through to Level 8 which proclaimed “You CAN write proper English under pressure.” I passed but was tricky.

    2. They actually have one wrong themselves in that section (level 7).

      They want to call “Peoples’ choice” wrong (as opposed to “people’s choice” or “Peoples’ choices”). But it is not necessarily wrong. It just needs the appropriate context: “It was the native peoples’ choice not to accept the treaty” – where peoples = more than one tribe.

      1. Absolutely agree. I got through to Level 7 more or less OK but I kept failing Level 7 – because of the ambiguity of that one.
        (I did get through Level 7 a couple of times but didn’t click ‘proceed’ in time to go to Level 8).

        ‘More or less OK’ means I failed a couple of earlier steps due to clicking the wrong button by mistake – and I think this is because the ‘Right’ button was on the LEFT and the ‘Wrong’ button was on the RIGHT – and I found this counter-intuitive.

  24. Of course I can write proper English under pressure- I am English, anything I write is automatically correct English and no damn foreigner can say anything different (Typos excepted.)

  26. Made it and was pronounced able to write under pressure, but tripped several times, especially over the discrete/discreet distinction.

  28. Heh. 35+ years as a professional writer, the vast majority of which consisted of writing under deadline pressures.

    I’m quite sure I don’t need an online “gotcha” test to tell me whether or not I can hack it.

  29. Damn it, I’ve always been a very accurate speller and grammarian but apparently my life-long spelling of ‘privelege’ is non-standard. That tripped me up at Level 6 on the first try, but didn’t come up on the second and I made Level 8.

    1. I’ve found that I suck at spelling because of auto correct. I can’t believe there was a time when I had to write essays in exams & I managed to spell everything correctly without spell check!

  34. Trick question.

    There’s no such thing as ‘proper English’.

    English is a bastard mongrel of a language that has spent its entire existence picking over the trash heaps of linguistic history and devouring any mouldy old bit of grammar that wasn’t properly nailed down.

    ^_^

  36. I wonder what this test thinks it’s trying to assess? When are we ever required to spell against a countdown? None of these are hard; only the visual distraction of the bar sweeping across the screen makes them so. Clicking in the correct box is also a completely separate operation from deciding whether the answer is right or wrong, and making sure you click the right one often takes up more time than judging the answer.

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