Quiz

BuzzFeed News Reporter

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Are you a BuzzFeed News grammar and style expert? The copy desk challenged our writers and editors to correctly answer all five questions — now it's your turn!

Do Your Grammar And Punctuation Skills Measure Up Against A BuzzFeed News Copy Editor?

Nashville is one of the cities listed in our dateline guidelines that do not require a state name (in the dateline and running text). We abbreviate months when used with a specific date, and we never use ordinals (e.g., -th, -nd, and -st) with dates.  
  
  
Finally, "remain" should be "remains" in the last example, because business names are treated as collective nouns and take singular verbs.

Which of the following is correct per BuzzFeed News and AP style?

Corrections should lead with the correct information, and there is no need to restate the error or apologize for the mistake.

Which of these corrections follows BuzzFeed News' guidelines?

When quoting several paragraphs of dialogue, you can use running text or set them off as a block quote without quotation marks (unless the extract contains an interior quote, for which you'd use double quotation marks). But for running text, each paragraph should start with a quotation mark so the reader knows the quote continues, with the closing quotation mark at the very end. (Oh, and "magazine" isn't part of People's title, so it should be lowercase.)

Which of the following quotations uses the correct punctuation and formatting?

Captions that are full sentences end with a period, use present tense, follow AP style for dates, and should avoid unnecessary descriptive and passive language (e.g., “is seen”) or directionals unless necessary for context. And always use a comma after the year in full dates when they are followed by other text.   
  
PS: Koalas are marsupials, _not_ bears.

Which photo caption wouldn't require any changes by the BuzzFeed News copy editors?

Use "who" to refer to humans and named animals and "that" to refer to inanimate objects. Also, use "that" for essential clauses (without commas) and "which" for nonessential clauses (usually set off with commas or dashes). _AP Stylebook_ tip: If you can drop the clause and not lose the meaning of the sentence, use "which"; otherwise, use "that."

Which of these sentences is grammatically correct and follows AP and BuzzFeed News style?

Your grammar might be a little rusty, but Keyboard Cat isn't going to play you off just yet!

Well done! You’re definitely smarter than the average bear when it comes to grammar and style.

Congratulations! You're a full-fledged member of the grammar police — now get out there and enforce the rules!

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Do Your Grammar And Punctuation Skills Measure Up Against A BuzzFeed News Copy Editor?

This quiz uses BuzzFeed house style, and you can find our full guide here.

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