Question 1:
(d). Most publications use "mice," but the editors of Wired Style: Principles of English Usage in the Digital Age express a preference for "mouses," and the manuals published by Microsoft opt for "mouse devices." See The Copyeditor's Handbook, pages ix-x.
Question 2:
(d). A consensus is building for 'e-mail,' but some publications still retain the capital E, and Wired Style advocates 'email.' See The Copyeditor's Handbook, pages 143-44.
Question 3:
(d). The major editorial style manuals offer three conventions for numerical ranges. Item (a) illustrates the 'repeat all digits in the range' convention. Item (b) illustrates the 'repeat only the digits that change' convention. Item (c) follows the elision principles in The Chicago Manual of Style. Although item (d) might look consistent, none of the major editorial style manuals offers a 'repeat the last two digits in the range' convention. See The Copyeditor's Handbook, pages 188-89.
Question 4:
(a), (b), and (d). In (a) "it seems to me" is not the grammatical subject of "As a freelancer editor"; to avoid the dangler, we would need "As a freelance editor, I . . . " According to (b), it is "no one" who has hired 350 technicians. Item (d) tells us that "his morale" was visited by his friends. In item (c), in contrast, "given" is an absolute participle. See The Copyeditor's Handbook, pages 356-60.
Question 5:
(a), (b), (c), and (d). When the specific brand is not important to the meaning of the sentence, most copyeditors propose a generic term. The generic substitute for "Dumpster" is unwieldy (large streetside trash container?). The substitutes for the other three are simpler: Mace = tear gas; Styrofoam = plastic foam; and Tabasco = hot pepper sauce. See The Copyeditor's Handbook, pages 158-59.
Question 6:
(b). The asterisk-dagger system is often used in tables that contain
numerical data. The footnotes are "numbered" with superscript characters in
the following order: asterisk, dagger, double dagger, section sign,
parallels sign, number sign. See The Copyeditor's Handbook, pages 254-55.
Question 7:
(c). See The Copyeditor's Handbook, page 321.
Question 8:
If one takes a formalist approach to subject-verb agreement, the subject of the verb "exasperate" is "those errors" and therefore the plural "exasperate" is required.
In practice, however, many writers deem "one" to be the subject (a subject that is modified by the phrase "of those errors") and chose the singular "exasperates." See The Copyeditor's Handbook, page 345.
Question 9:
Another disputed construction. The formalists insist that the subject of the verb is "one" (one in five children is not covered), while the notionalists choose the plural "are" because the sentence is not about one child but many. See The Copyeditor's Handbook, page 344.
Question 10:
(a). When the truth or falsity of a condition is unknown, the condition is stated in the indicative, not the subjunctive. See The Copyeditor's Handbook, pages 355-56.
Question 11:
The choice depends on which style manual or dictionary one consults. Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary closes up temporary "co" compounds except when the stem begins with an "o": coact, cochair, cocounsel, coworker, co-organizer, co-owner (permanent compounds, such as "coordinate" and "cooperate" are closed). The Chicago Manual recommends closing up compounds that begin with prefixes, unless the closed compound "might be misleading or difficult to read." The Associated Press Stylebook recommends retaining the hyphen in nouns, adjectives, and verbs that "indicate occupation or status": co-worker, co-star, co-host, co-pilot. See The Copyeditor's Handbook, pages 142-43.
Question 12:
(a). Pronunciation determines the choice between "a" and "an" before an acronym or initialism. FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) is pronounced "foy-a." See The Copyeditor's Handbook, page 230.
Question 13:
Both constructions are acceptable because "one in six households" may be construed as a countable number of households (which would call for "Fewer") or as a noncountable sum or quantity (which would call for "Less"). See The Copyeditor's Handbook, pages 370-71.
Question 14:
The style manuals most often used in book publishing—The Chicago Manual of Style, Words into Type, and Scientific Style and Format—prefer "Charles's"; The Associated Press Stylebook, used by some corporate publishers as well as by newspapers, calls for "Charles'." To avoid the sibilant hiss of "Ray Charles's songs," some editors would reword the sentence. See The Copyeditor's Handbook, page 135.
Question 15:
(a). The case of a relative pronoun is determined by its function in the relative clause. Here, "whoever" is the subject of "will be training the new editors." See The Copyeditor's Handbook, page 366.
