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If you’re considering becoming a proofreader, you may wonder if proofreaders are still needed. As a trained proofreader, I can assure you that proofreading continues to be a sought-after service.
People will keep using Grammarly, and now ChatGPT, for simple texts. However, proofreaders are still needed for complex, lengthy, or important documents. Proofreading software and AI cannot fully understand the complexities and nuances of language like humans; therefore, they can miss errors and sometimes make erroneous suggestions.
Let’s see why proofreaders are still needed and explore what kind of know-how technology would need for it to replace proofreaders.
Why Proofreaders Are Still Needed
Proofreading will be necessary as long as we continue to produce written content. Although proofreading software and AI are helpful tools, they’re no substitute for a qualified proofreader.
Only a trained professional can find the mistakes software and AI miss.
Will Technology Ever Replace Proofreaders?
People disagree about whether technology will eventually replace proofreaders entirely.
However, current proofreading software and AI can’t compete with a trained professional who not only understands grammar and mechanics but also the writer’s intent and voice.
Proofreaders understand the intricacies and subtleties of language in a way that machines do not.
Proofreaders also work with style guides that contain specific (not generic) rules for correcting people’s prose.
Proofreading software and AI, while valuable, use algorithms that aren’t foolproof.
They still overlook blunders and make mistaken suggestions. We’ll look at specific examples of this in a bit.
Does ChatGPT Think It Can Replace a Proofreader?
Here was ChatGPT’s response when I asked it if it thinks it can replace a proofreader.
I can certainly help with proofreading to some extent. I can identify grammar and spelling errors, suggest improvements in sentence structure, and provide general writing tips. However, please note that I am not infallible, and for critical documents or professional work, it’s always advisable to have a human proofreader. Humans bring contextual understanding, cultural nuance, and a deeper level of comprehension that AI may not fully capture.
Source: OpenAI, ChatGPT, 2024 (https://chat.openai.com)
Furthermore, in fine print at the bottom of the screen in ChatGPT, it reads, “ChatGPT can make mistakes. Consider checking important information.”
I also asked ChatGPT if proofreaders are still needed.
Finally, I asked ChatGPT to explain why human proofreaders are still necessary. Here’s part of its response:
ChatGPT
In case ChatGPT’s output is too small for you to read, here are the main points mentioned in the screenshot above as to why we still need proofreaders. I’ve also included three other reasons it gave.
- Context Understanding
- Creativity and Style
- Adaptability to Change
- Critical Thinking
- Understanding Intended Meaning
- Handling Ambiguity
- Cultural Sensitivity
- Formatting and Layout
- Personalization
- Quality Assurance
As we can see, ChatGPT agrees that we still need humans to proofread.
Now let’s delve deeper into why we still need these eagle-eyed error eradicators!
Software and AI Miss Too Many Mistakes
To illustrate how errors elude technology, I fed Taylor Mali’s humorous poem “The the Impotence of Proofreading” to ChatGPT.
I asked ChatGPT to proofread the piece according to the rules in one of the major style guides: The Chicago Manual of Style (CMOS). We’ll talk more about how proofreaders use style guides soon.
I fed ChatGPT the entire poem so it could understand the context.
Here’s the section from the original poem that ChatGPT had the most difficulty proofreading.
Below, you can see what ChatGPT churned out after proofreading that section of the poem.
Let’s look at the mistakes this large language model made.
ChatGPT Made a Mistake with the Poem’s Title
Before we get into the section of Taylor’s poem that I had ChatGPT proofread, I think it’s important to note a big blunder.
ChatGPT didn’t correct the poem’s title (“The the Impotence of Proofreading”) to “The Importance of Proofreading.”
It “corrected” it to “The Impotence of Proofreading.”
That’s a significant oversight from the get-go.
Additionally, you may have noticed that in the screenshot above, ChatGPT didn’t change D= to D-, and it left the phrase “world’s liverwurst speller.”
Maybe it was supposed to read “world’s literal worst speller.”
I would have asked the author what they meant so that the word liverwurst wouldn’t have ended up in the final iteration of their poem.
It Allowed a Spelling Mistake to Slide By
The word spell chukker should have been corrected to spellchecker or spell-checker.
CMOS follows the Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary (11th Edition) for spelling. According to Merriam-Webster’s, spellchecker is correctly written as one word or hyphenated.
ChatGPT left it as two words every time it appeared in the text.
ChatGPT Left Us with a Nonsensical Sentence
Remember this peculiar sentence from the poem:
“And God for billing purposes only you should have serial problems with Tori Spelling.”
Let’s see ChatGPT’s correction:
ChatGPT: And, for billing purposes only, you should have serial problems with Tori Spelling.”
You don’t have to be a proofreader to know that’s a wacky sentence.
The original sentence is so confusing that I’m not sure how to correct it.
When a proofreader is unsure what the writer means, they query the author.
ChatGPT didn’t query the author.
Instead, it assumed that the outlandish sentence should be included in the proofread version of the poem.
A proofreader will flag obvious errors like this that are not aligned with or are contradictory to the intended message.
It Likely Made an Incorrect “Correction”
Consider this sentence from the original poem: “It just goes to show you how embargo one careless clit of the mouth can be.” Well, there’s an interesting sentence for you. 😉
What’s Likely Correct: It just goes to show you how embarrassing one careless click of the mouse can be.
ChatGPT: It just goes to show you how important one careless click of the mouse can be.
I doubt the intended word was important.
Since the poem says embargo, I think the intended word was embarrassing.
Instead of guessing (like ChatGPT), a proofreader would query the author to make sure that’s the word they intended to use.
Not Everyone Trusts ChatGPT
I’ve been writing a children’s book for a while now, and I wouldn’t be willing to put it through ChatGPT.
Perhaps my concerns are unfounded, but I feel uneasy putting important information through AI due to concerns about privacy and information theft.
Any respectable proofreader will sign a nondisclosure agreement. However, ChatGPT isn’t able to do this.
Some People Want to Work with a Person
Would you rather collaborate with a person or a machine? I’d rather join forces with a person.
Some people will prefer working with people, even as technology improves.
Humans can provide insights and a connection that machines can’t replicate.
And humans care more about another person’s prose than software or a large language model does.
Proofreaders handle writing carefully, only making changes when necessary and never filling in the blanks based on assumptions about what the author meant.
As fellow humans, they understand the hard work and effort that go into creating an original piece of writing, so they’ll treat it respectfully and polish it to the best of their ability.
Companies Offering Proofreading Services Are Still in Business
Numerous companies still provide proofreading services, which is further evidence that proofreaders are still needed.
If you’d like to see some examples of these businesses, I wrote a comprehensive article about online proofreading work for beginners. Online proofreading and editing companies offer about one-third of the jobs mentioned in this post.
And if you’re unsure about the difference between proofreading and editing, feel free to check out this post on Om Proofreading.
The article discusses the differences between the four traditional editing stages: developmental editing, line editing, copyediting, and proofreading.
It’s important to note that proofreaders are sometimes the only professionals called upon to tidy up short texts.
Given the importance of proofreading, letting technology be the last set of “eyes” on a document is quite a crapshoot.
Proofreading Software and AI Don’t Understand Style Guides
One essential element that proofreading software and ChatGPT lack is the ability to account for all the differences between style guides.
We have countless style guides that provide standards for writing in various industries.
However, the four major style guides for proofreading English are the following:
- The Chicago Manual of Style
- The Associated Press Stylebook
- the MLA (Modern Language Association) Handbook
- the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association
Except for the MLA Handbook, each guide specifies which dictionary to follow.
Proofreaders use different style manuals depending on the type of document they’re proofing.
I mentioned CMOS, one of the most esteemed, comprehensive, and commonly used style guides. It’s the go-to guide for proofreading books, and it can be applied to other types of texts too.
The rules from one style guide to the next can differ significantly.
Case in point, June Casagrande’s The Best Punctuation Book, Period, shows how each of the four major style guides differs in its application of punctuation.
It’s a handy resource for proofreaders!
Only a trained proofreader will know whether to accept or reject punctuation corrections made by technology since some modifications may apply to one style guide but not another.
And if you’re worried that style guides are a new trend that could quickly disappear, consider that CMOS was first published in 1906 and is now in its 17th edition.
An Example of a Snafu with Style Guides
Let’s say we’re proofreading together, and we come across this sentence:
Julie’s brothers—Ben and Tom—supported her in every step of her recovery.
Is this sentence correct? Well, it depends on where it’s written.
The punctuation in this sentence is acceptable if we’re proofreading a book. But it’s not if we’re proofreading a newspaper article.
Journalism typically abides by The Associated Press Stylebook, which almost always calls for space on either side of em dashes. Therefore, the sentence suitable for a news story would look like this:
Julie’s brothers — Ben and Tom — supported her in every step of her recovery.
Since ChatGPT (and Grammarly) aren’t programmed with style guides, how will they know when to leave the spaces on either side of the em dash and when to remove them?
How Grammarly Premium Dealt with This Punctuation Problem
I ran the above section of my blog post through Grammarly Premium (the robust version of Grammarly), and it failed to detect an error in either version of the sentence about Julie’s brothers.
It should have flagged at least one of the two sentences due to a lack of consistency.
These two sentences are fine as written in this article since I’m illustrating a point.
However, what if a client sent us a book manuscript that had em dashes with spaces on either side?
As proofreaders, we know those spaces have to go (per CMOS). But Grammarly didn’t let us know!
How ChatGPT Treated This Punctuation Pitfall
ChatGPT struggled also. Below is its response when I asked it to proofread the sentence—the one with spaces on each side of the em dashes—according to CMOS.
ChatGPT confidently told me that the sentence was correctly punctuated per CMOS, but it wasn’t.
CMOS dictates that we don’t use spaces on either side of an em dash, so that sentence has four spaces that shouldn’t be there.
Examples of Other Elements This Technology Doesn’t Consider
Checking that style guide specifications are met is just one example of what proofreading software and AI can’t do.
Let’s briefly look at a few other basics that are problematic.
An Inability to Check Cross-References
Cross-references refer to any part of a document that points you to more information located elsewhere within the same document.
Part of a proofreader’s job is to ensure these cross-references are correct.
For example, if a document reads, “See figure 3,” does it refer to the correct figure? Or maybe the author meant for the reader to look at figure 4, which contains the relevant information.
A Potential Blunder with Bibliographies
Now let’s think about the bibliography of a thesis.
What if the author lists a source in their bibliography but doesn’t cite it anywhere in their paper? During the editing stage, they may have scrapped the part of their thesis pertaining to that source.
A proofreader would know to eliminate that source from the bibliography, but Grammarly wouldn’t do that.
I doubt ChatGPT could do that, either. When I asked if it could, it didn’t give me a definite answer. It just reiterated that “if a source is listed in the bibliography but not cited anywhere in the paper, it may be appropriate to suggest removing it from the bibliography.”
Incompetence with Checking Where a Link Leads
As one more example, proofreaders of online content usually verify that links work and that they direct the reader to the right place.
This task goes beyond Grammarly and ChatGPT’s abilities.
Only a human can tell a website owner if they’ve linked to the wrong content.
Falling Short When Checking Formatting
Proofreaders watch out for formatting flubs.
Are indentations missing in some places? Is the spacing between lines and paragraphs consistent? Are page numbers in the proper order? Are there any font size or style changes where there shouldn’t be?
Let’s consider font style, specifically.
If you’re proofreading a book, the same font should be used to write “Chapter 8” as was used to write “Chapter 1.”
Proofreaders also need to consider formatting for elements (e.g., table of contents, index, appendix, bibliography, footnotes, endnotes) that may appear at the beginning or end of several types of documents.
In addition to checking cross-references for these items, proofreaders need to verify they’ve been formatted correctly and consistently.
Proofreading software and ChatGPT are limited in the kinds of formatting faux pas they can fix.
They would fail to fix formatting fumbles in our hypothetical book for obvious reasons—they can’t manage the sheer volume of text.
And if the book’s font style or size changed halfway through, it would look acceptable to ChatGPT. The language model converts all writing into a similar font when you copy and paste a document into the “Message ChatGPT” section.
Not Being Up to Date with Industry-Specific Terms
Although software and AI receive periodic updates, they’re not always aware of the latest terms that have become part of a particular industry’s vernacular.
They can also get tripped up on slang.
To wrap up, let’s see what proofreading software and AI would need to do to substitute for a proofreader.
What Technology Would Have to Do to Replace Proofreaders
Grammarly or ChatGPT would have to be programmed with an immensely complex algorithm to be sufficient to stand in for a proofreader.
Here are examples of what it would need to know how to do:
- allow for breaking the rules occasionally
- correct mistakes in accordance with context
- accurately apply the appropriate rules in countless style guides and house styles
- comprehend humor and subtleties like wordplay and sarcasm
- consider writing within numerous genres and varying levels of formality
- have a firm grasp of a myriad of dialects
- query the writer when something needs clarification
- be able to check cross-references
- know how to fix a host of formatting flubs
- respect the writer’s style and voice, preserving the uniqueness of their work
- understand the writer’s intent and ensure the proper tone throughout a text
Furthermore, the algorithm would need to be tweaked whenever a dictionary or style guide was updated.
It’s hard to imagine proofreading software like Grammarly or a large language model like ChatGPT that can understand how to correct errors while considering context and style guides, all while preserving the writer’s style and voice.
A writer’s heart and personality continue to shine if their writing is in the hands of discerning individuals whose top priority is respecting their authorial creativity.
We don’t want to let an algorithm suck the humanity out of humans—especially when it comes to something as sacred as the delicate art of fine-tuning creative expression in the form of writing.
That concludes our conversation about why proofreaders are still needed.
If you’re interested in becoming a proofreader, you may want to check out my article “Become a Proofreader with No Experience (A 10-Step Guide).”
Best wishes to you!
“We don’t make mistakes, just happy little accidents.”
– Bob Ross
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