These days there are lots of automatic spellcheckers and grammar bots around. Microsoft Word’s automatic spellchecker is probably the most well known of these, correcting errors and underlining potential issues as you type.
But these systems, although useful, are not a replacement for professional proofreading and when tested always come up significantly short. Why? There are many reasons, but the most important include the following.
Proper Nouns
Automated spellcheckers work with a limited lexical set that won’t include all of the proper nouns you need. Common first names (e.g. David or Ruth) and well known places (e.g. London or New York) will usually be included but more obscure terms (such as the surnames of authors you need to cite) often won’t.
Technical Terms
As with proper nouns, many technical terms will not be recognised by automatic spellcheckers. This can be especially problematic if you’re studying a science or engineering subject where dense terminology is common.
Computers Overlook Errors
Even when a word is recognised by your spellchecker, mistakes can still slip past. This is because a spellchecker will only tell you if a word is wrongly spelled, not if it is used correctly: ‘grate’ is a word, but if it’s used in place of its homophone ‘great’ it won’t make sense. On the plus side, this has given rise to some interesting poetry.
Find this useful?
Subscribe to our newsletter and get writing tips from our editors straight to your inbox.
Structure
One important thing that humans have which computers don’t is real literacy skills: as well as correcting errors in your work, a human proofreader will be able to tell you how well it reads and offer suggestions to improve the structure of your essay.
Consistency
Another vital thing that a computer will typically overlook is consistency. A spellchecker won’t point out that you’ve mixed ‘-ise’ and ‘-ize’ endings in your work, for instance, nor whether your citations are clear and consistent throughout. A human proofreader will.
Humans can Check Formatting and Presentation
Finally, a human proofreader can offer guidance on the presentation and formatting of your work. This is almost as important as correct spelling and grammar, especially if you need your work to make a good first impression.