It’s not surprising that a number of proofreading myths are floating around in our day and age.
After all, a lot of people have misunderstandings when it comes to proofreading and proofreaders. This is very evident if you peruse proofreading job listings on sites like Upwork. Many of these clients are looking for full-fledged writers, project managers, or even virtual assistants, making it obvious they are not at all clear about what the term even means.
Because of the prevalence of such misunderstandings and stereotypes, today we are going to dissect three common proofreading myths in an attempt to put them to bed once and for all.
Proofreading Myth #1: Proofreading is not necessary because spell-checkers can catch every mistake.
Spell-checkers are amazing tools that everyone ought to be using. And whether you are a proofreader or not, you should absolutely download and install the free version of Grammarly on your computer.
Why spell-checkers are important
If you’ve never heard of it, Grammarly is a software tool that checks written content for spelling, grammar, and usage issues. There are other spell-checkers on the market, but Grammarly is by far the most popular, and for good reason: it is very good at finding certain mistakes.
If you’ve clearly misspelled a word, for example, the tool will usually catch it. If you’re missing a definite or indefinite article (i.e., a the or an a), it is also fairly good at catching the mistake.
Why spell-checkers aren’t perfect
But it will also suggest corrections that don’t align with certain style guides. For instance, the Chicago Manual of Style states that most words beginning with “co-”—think coworker and cofounder—don’t need a hyphen. Grammarly, however, sides with the AP Stylebook, which does insist on those pesky hyphens. So if you’re proofreading to Chicago rules, you’ll have to ignore those “corrections”.
Worse yet, sometimes the tool is blatantly wrong, suggesting “fixes” that would make your high school English teacher wince. Just as bad, at times it will suggest multiple “correct” options, which almost never helps!
And what’s true for Grammarly is true for every other spell-checker out there: they are just not good enough to catch every mistake.
How to get the most value out of a spell-checker
Despite its drawbacks, spell-checkers are extremely useful to use as a part of your proofreading process because it does ensure that you don’t somehow miss certain errors. And these tools do force you to stop and think about the right grammar and style rules when they perceive an error.
Overall, the best way to use any spell-checker is to consider it as a “junior proofreader” or “proofreading intern”. They are good at bringing potential issues to your attention (and are therefore a helpful resource), but sometimes they are just plain wrong.
Thus equally wrong is the idea that running a document through Grammarly is somehow as good as sending it to a professional proofreader.
Proofreading Myth #2: Proofreaders are not needed in the digital age where everything can be automated.
We are no doubt in the midst of an artificial intelligence (AI) revolution. It seems like every few months someone comes out with an exponentially better AI tool. Not only that, but computers have beaten the best humanity has to offer in games like chess, Go, and Jeopardy. AI is also being developed to diagnose medical issues in place of human doctors and for thousands of other important applications.
So what chance do proofreaders have? Doesn’t it make sense that our job can be done better by AI too?
Understanding what AI actually is
It’s always a possibility that AI will learn to proofread better and faster than a person, but the likelihood is still small because of how AI works. Specifically, the type of AI in question is called a large language model. These programs work by being fed gargantuan amounts of data and learning the probabilities between data points. This can lead to a few issues when it comes to AI proofreading, though.
First, what data are these computers being trained on? The answer is the internet. Given that not every webpage is grammatically perfect, it’s going to be extremely difficult for the AI to differentiate between what’s correct and what’s incorrect, especially in the case of common errors (just think of how many websites out there misuse words like myself or irregardless). In other words, if you put garbage into the system, you’ll get garbage out.
Second, remember that AI does not understand concepts like true or false, or right or wrong. It’s only interested in probabilities. In effect, a large language model is a sophisticated version of the autocomplete function on your smartphone. It can tell you what is most likely to be the next word in a sentence, but it cannot tell you if that is the right word for the sentence.
The limitations of AI in its current form
These limitations are at the design level too—no amount of additional “intelligence” on the part of the computer program can solve them. That doesn’t mean that AI can’t proofread a text—if you ask it to it will do it—but like anything produced by AI, one should not assume it is automatically right. A human being still needs to review anything created by AI before publishing.
So until a new form of AI emerges that solves these problems, anyone using it for their proofreading needs should proceed with extreme caution.
Proofreading Myth #3: Proofreaders are walking dictionaries and know every grammar rule by heart.
The prevailing stereotype of a proofreader is a person who immediately and intuitively spots every error and misspelling. And while it is certainly true that a professional proofreader is likely much better at spotting these things than an average person, the idea that a proofreader has exhaustive knowledge of all things grammar and spelling at their immediate command is definitely another myth.
The actual truth is a dictionary is a proofreader’s best friend. Given that there are around 170,000 words currently in use in the English language, it is just not possible for anyone to memorize all of them. Rather than relying on memory, good proofreaders will look up any words that they aren’t familiar with or seem “off”.
The same applies for the rules of grammar—a professional isn’t going to memorize an entire style guide; rather, they are going to familiarize themselves with it and then reference it when necessary.
So while a proofreader may have internalized more of the rules of spelling and grammar than a typical person, they also look things up more as well.
Wrapping it up
Proofreading myths abound. On the one hand, some people think a spell-checker or AI can replace a human proofreader. On the other hand, some people think of proofreaders as having superhuman spelling and grammar abilities. In reality, proofreaders are people who do important, valuable work that can’t be automated (at least for the foreseeable future), and they work hard, making use of all available resources to do the job right.
If you want to become a professional proofreader and earn money as a side gig or career, take a look around the website to learn the ins and outs of this amazing profession. You can also subscribe below to get the weekly blog right in your inbox.