Critical Proofreading

Proofreading Russian Texts

Proofreading in Russian requires knowledge of the language's distinctive grammatical and punctuation rules. This lesson covers the most common errors made at C1 level and systematic strategies for catching them.

Top categories of errors in advanced Russian writing:

1. Case government errors (управление): Verbs and prepositions govern specific cases. Common errors:

• «Ждать автобус» (wrong) → «Ждать автобуса» (accusative-imperfective vs. genitive-perfectivised)
• «Зависит от решение» (wrong) → «Зависит от решения» (genitive after «от»)

2. Numeral agreement: Numbers 2-4 take genitive singular; 5+ take genitive plural:

• «Две отчёта» (wrong) → «Два отчёта»; «Пять отчётов» (genitive plural)

3. Comma placement before conjunctions:

• «Он сказал что придёт» (wrong) → «Он сказал, что придёт» (comma before «что» in subordinate clauses)
• No comma before «и» joining two verbs in the same subject-predicate: «Он пришёл и сел»

4. Dash in nominal predicate: «Москва — столица России» — dash is obligatory between noun subject and noun predicate without a verb.

5. Participial phrase punctuation: Active and passive participial phrases are set off by commas only when they follow the noun they modify, not precede it.

Practical proofreading checklist:

• Check all numbers for numeral agreement
• Verify case after каждый preposition
• Read aloud to catch missing commas
• Search for «который» — ensure the relative clause is properly set off
• Double-check all proper nouns for capitalisation