Why Worry About Proofreading Anyway?

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a writer who has just published their work will find an errant typo, no matter how many times they have done a final check. As a writer myself, I cannot tell you the number of times I have scoured an article or an essay, taken that last deep breath, hit publish…and then noticed that I wrote “his” instead of “this,” “he” instead of “the,” or left an extra space between two words.

I consider myself fairly eagle-eyed when it comes to proofreading. So much so that I annoy my family quite often by pointing out errors on billboards, restaurant signs, doctor’s office signs—you name it. But even I can’t maintain a 100% success rate. How can I reassure myself, and my readers, that I am putting my best foot forward?

No longer just for summarizing meetings, curating your to-do list, or finding the perfect recipe, AI also boasts a number of useful proofreading methods.

(Before I delve into the specifics, I, as your friendly neighborhood technophobe, want to encourage you to use these methods as a supplement to—not a replacement for—yourself or another human, as this article from Nature also suggests. AI presents wonderful opportunities, but it is best utilized as a collaborator alongside human intelligence and creativity.

For example, I am awful at coming up with headlines. I don’t know what it is; my mind just blanks when I try to do it. AI is, frankly, a genius at this task. I could kill myself coming up with a lazy headline…or I could let AI do it in under two seconds.)

What Are My Choices?

There are probably as many AI proofreading tools as there are web developers out there, but for our purposes, I’ll highlight Grammarly, QuillBot, and LanguageTool, which were identified by Best AI Tools as having attracted the highest traffic levels.

(Note: LanguageTool is the fifth-most trafficked AI site on this list, but the third and fourth are not relevant to proofreading or to non-students. In order to make this article as useful as possible, I am skipping those two options.)

As a control group for this experiment, I typed up a quick passage to use across all the platforms I’m testing. I tried to include all the errors the programs would likely look for, including misspelled words, grammatical errors, word usage, flow, coherence, and syntax.

In the blue big house I saw a kat. Inn the cats eyes, I saw a gleam. The gleam was sinister. It reminded me of my mother. And of my father.

In order to get a sense of potentially thornier issues like maintaining voice, flagging “AI speak,” and ensuring fact-checking, I added the following to some of these prompts:

The gleam wasn’t just sinister. It was mean. And it proved what I always knew—that 50% of all cats are sinister beings. It stands to reason that with a sinister cat next door, I was in danger of sinister cats everywhere. Joe Schmoe, an esteemed scholar, recently published “Cats: The Sinister Beings Next Door?”, in which he argued that eight out of ten domestic shorthairs are really giant insects in disguise, putting their owners at risk of infestation. I knew that Schmoe was onto something.

(Please don’t judge either my parents or myself based on this passage—I’m a much better writer than this, and my parents’ eyes are, happily, sinister-gleam free. Also, I love cats.)

First on the Chopping Block: Grammarly

Grammarly has been around since 2009, making it a bit of a unicorn in the tech world: old enough to seem like it should be obsolete, yet hip enough to remain relevant and popular.

(Side note: I used the first iteration of Grammarly at 23 to help with a cover letter when I was applying for my first “big girl” job after college. I didn’t get an interview, but, in hindsight, it probably had more to do with the job itself and not Grammarly’s help—or lack thereof.)

Boasting a 3.4 rating from more than 10,000 reviews on Trustpilot, it seems obvious that Grammarly has wormed its way into our daily lives. Even some of the negative reviewers mention using Grammarly’s help in writing their reviews!

The Stats:

Price: Grammarly comes with a free version that includes what most of us probably think of when we think of Grammarly: proofreading and grammatical corrections, as well as a “Set Your Tone” feature, which helps you see how your writing will come across to readers. The free version also includes tech support and 100 AI prompts per month.

Its paid tiers are very reasonable: Pro, for $11.99/month, includes all of Grammarly’s writing features and many of its technology and security features; and Enterprise, which is priced on a case-by-case basis and includes all features. (Note: You can get a 7-day free trial of Grammarly Pro that can be canceled at any time. Always a plus!)

Usability: Once I got underway, Grammarly did the rest. No stress!

Features: You, the user, have a lot of control over what Grammarly fixes for you and how. You can set your preferences for tone and language, change those preferences at any time, or use a different tone or language for individual pieces.

I was impressed by what I was able to ask Grammarly to help me with. It included things I wouldn’t have thought to check, including an Authorship report—a private (unless you choose to publicize it) report that shows your exact process, including the percentage of material that was human-drafted and what percentage was AI-drafted.

Honestly, this feature could be a deal-maker for anyone whose reputation or livelihood depends on audience trust and loyalty.

Quality: Grammarly’s grammatical and proofreading corrections are reliable. When I plugged in the first template above, Grammarly came back with this:

In the big blue house, I saw a cat. In the cat’s eyes, I saw a gleam. The gleam was sinister. It reminded me of my mother. And of my father.

Pretty straightforward proofreading. However, when I typed in the longer template and ran a fact-check, Grammarly didn’t find any issues.

This makes my head spin. In two sentences, I had made a fallacious argument, cited a made-up scholar and a made-up article, and used a dead link. But because I used a vaguely academic tone, the program didn’t notice anything.

I don’t have to tell you that relying on Grammarly for a check of this depth could spell disaster.

Drawbacks: First, there is no shortage of negative reviews (roughly the same number of 4-star reviews as 1-, 2-, or 3-star reviews). These run the gamut from billing complaints to unnecessary “corrections.” This doesn’t take away from the highly positive reviews, but this kind of split tells me that it’s a bit of a gamble. Your experience with Grammarly could be excellent, or it could be kind of a bummer.

Second (and this is not specific to Grammarly alone), because an account comes with a browser extension, I was suddenly seeing the “Grammarly issues counter” everywhere: on my work (where I do want it), but also on emails, Facebook posts, and personal writing that isn’t ready to be edited yet.

It’s distracting and, more worryingly, self-limiting. A first draft needs the freedom to be terrible, but the constant visual reminder of errors and possible issues makes it difficult to give myself that freedom.

Final Verdict: Grammarly is helpful overall, as long as I don’t rely on it to catch issues with logic or structure. If I get used to its presence everywhere, I think I would gain some valuable insights from this tool.

Next Up: QuillBot

QuillBot got its start in 2017, when founder Anil Jason was determined to find a way to help ELL (English Language Learning) students. The site’s Paraphraser was its first feature and began gaining traction in 2018.

Since then, QuillBot has grown to more than 35 million monthly users and has earned 4.8 stars from almost 13 million reviews around the world, the vast majority of which are five-star reviews.

The Stats:

Price: Like Grammarly, QuillBot comes with different tiers. You can sign up for the Free Plan, the Premium Plan ($8.33/month, billed annually), or the Team Plan, the cost of which is set on a case-by-case basis.

I’m sure it won’t surprise you to learn that I signed up for the Free Plan, which is fine for my needs (though it is fairly limited: no clarity score, no AI detection score, and no tone highlights).

Usability: QuillBot is easy to use and quick to learn; I figured it out in just a minute or two. I was happy to see that its extension, though not as widely integrated as Grammarly’s, felt less invasive and distracting.

However, I was frustrated while using it because I could not run different proofreading features on the same text. I had to re-enter the paragraph with each new feature, which slowed me down significantly.

Features: Beyond standard proofreading, QuillBot also includes features to humanize your writing, as well as a Paraphraser tool. At face value, these seem like useful additional features.

Quality: Unfortunately, this is how it humanized my paragraph:

I saw a kat in the big blue house. I saw a flash in the cats eyes. The gleam was sinister. It reminded me of Mother. And of my dad. The gleam was not only sinister. That was mean. And proved what I always knew, that 50% of all cats are sinister beings. With a sinister cat next door, I was in danger of sinister cats everywhere. It was logical. In a recent book, “Cats: The Sinister Beings Next Door?” famous scholar Joe Schmoe states that eight of ten domestic shorthairs are in fact giant insects in disguise, and that they pose a risk of infestation to their owners. I knew Schmoe was onto something.

Not impressive.

“Mother” and “my dad” are awkward choices, and what exactly is “That” referring to in “That was mean”? The gleam? It’s unclear.

QuillBot’s Paraphraser feature was also a bust. It returned a longer paragraph than the original (so, not really a paraphrase) and introduced several new errors.

Drawbacks: Though QuillBot has earned many five-star reviews, there were also several troubling two-star reviews claiming that QuillBot flagged 100% human-written text as “probably 100% AI.”

Final Verdict: Given its disappointing results, the awkwardness of having to re-enter the same text again and again, and the risk of having my own writing flagged as AI, I’d skip this one.

Last but Not Least: LanguageTool

Since 2003, LanguageTool has marketed itself as an improvement tool for millions of users. Its website boasts about its use of AI-based technology to analyze “style, tonality and typography of your text” and offer “context-aware suggestions.”

To date, more than two million LanguageTool browser extensions have been downloaded. The company also states that it improves more than 20 million texts every day.

The Stats:

Price: LanguageTool is affordable. There is a Free Plan that covers the basics and a Premium Plan that ranges from $24.90 per month to a two-year subscription at $4.99 per month.

Similar to many other sites, LanguageTool also offers a Team Plan for up to 20 people. (Note that the monthly price of the Team Plan differs depending on the size of your group.)

Usability: The site is user-friendly. Creating an account was far less complicated than it is on many other sites these days (a Free Plan only requires an email address and password), and I was up and running in just a couple of minutes.

Features: This program works in more than 30 languages! I only speak and write in English, so this fact isn’t relevant to me, but I do think it’s pretty cool.

It also provides a whole suite of add-ons, including options for various browsers, business programs, and email providers.

Quality: At first, I was mystified that LanguageTool gave my paragraph of gobbledygook a score of 82. But then I realized that it only promises to help with proofreading and grammar. It isn’t designed to do any further analysis than that.

So, for its intended purpose, it performed perfectly well.

Drawbacks: Trustpilot users give LanguageTool a 2.2 rating, much lower than the other two options. The majority of negative reviews mention charges that are either suspicious or downright illegitimate and, to date, have not been refunded.

So, go in with your eyes wide open is all I’m saying.

Additionally, while the Free Plan is fine for my needs, it is quite limited. You can only run a check on 2,000 words and paraphrase three sentences per day. LanguageTool’s other correction options are sparse as well.

Final Verdict: If you need a deeper-level analysis, steer clear of this one. But if you’re fine with a limited and free plan, and if all you need is some light proofreading, LanguageTool is easy to use and non-invasive.

(But buyer beware! Keep careful track of your charges, or stick with the Free Plan!)

The Takeaway: Which Should You Choose?

QuillBot

Best for: Honestly? I’m not sure.

If all you need is adequate proofreading (and if it won’t hurt your reputation to have your writing wrongly flagged as AI), then QuillBot is okay. But if that’s your situation, you might as well use the proofreading features that come standard in Google Docs. It’s free and much less invasive.

LanguageTool

Best for: Anyone writing in a language other than English who does not need in-depth analysis or help with tone and fact-checking.

LanguageTool is a fine proofreader, but it doesn’t go much further than that.

Grammarly

Best for: Anyone who needs proofreading in addition to slightly deeper analysis, including help identifying the dreaded “AI voice.”

But don’t rely on this tool for verifying your facts.

The last thing you want to do is publish another one of Joe Schmoe’s questionable academic studies.