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Why do people want to be proofreaders?


lloydsolutions

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I can’t believe the number of people who create gigs for proofreading and when you look at their existing gigs they are all something totally different. Then when you look at their gig and profile descriptions they are full of grammatical errors. What is this all about?

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Maybe because everyone thinks they’re an “Engleish Exppart?” 😛

I think it’s because there are so many tools out there that automatically correct grammar and spelling errors, proofread and all, so it’s easy to make some nice bucks by simply pasting the buyer’s document in those tools and sending the “corrected” work at no effort than a few clicks!

It’s probably the same reason why so many “SEO specialists” have surfaced lately.

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Proofreading is seen as an easy job that, as others have said, can be done with Grammarly or other programs.
When I tested Grammarly Premium, I found that approx 50% of the “errors” it flagged were either incorrectly flagged or the suggested fix was incorrect. I also found many, many more issues that were not flagged.

Unfortunately, many sellers think Grammarly or similar are sufficient and of course, many buyers do not know any difference. I think it is probably useful for things like writing emails and social media posts - the things its ads show - but not for anything beyond that.

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Maybe because everyone thinks they’re an “Engleish Exppart?” 😛

I think it’s because there are so many tools out there that automatically correct grammar and spelling errors, proofread and all, so it’s easy to make some nice bucks by simply pasting the buyer’s document in those tools and sending the “corrected” work at no effort than a few clicks!

It’s probably the same reason why so many “SEO specialists” have surfaced lately.

And some of these tools make things even worse, hahaha.

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Imagine you need some work in Hindi and you hire a translation guy and he does his job. Now you don’t know Hindi and you are not sure about quality of grammar and you can’t do it your self. That’s when a proofreader comes in action.

You can always do it with software but people don’t trust machine translation and same goes on for proofreading.

P.S. - I got a Hindi file for proofreading which was also done by some software and it made me busy for quite few hours.

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When I was testing a bunch of proofreaders, I bought $10 gigs from various sellers.

One of them sent it back with the “correction” being to remove the words - Only twice. So basically, it cost me $5 per word.

Well I once corrected around 100 words in a file and later buyer cross checked it and found I was correct. Got paid good on that one.

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I would be good at it but unfortunately do not have the time to do it. My other sources of income are much more lucrative. 🙂

Exactly my thoughts. Plus, I cannot imagine myself coping with multiple proofreading orders without going insane or eventually blind. Or maybe I’m a 🐔 lol

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So this proofreading is lucrative!

Please don’t wake up sleeping dogs.

There are folks on the forum searching for things that are lucrative instead of things they actually are capable of doing.

Never mind the fact that it really isn’t that lucrative. Trust me, it’s my only gig. I am not getting rich.

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Proofreading is seen as an easy job that, as others have said, can be done with Grammarly or other programs.

When I tested Grammarly Premium, I found that approx 50% of the “errors” it flagged were either incorrectly flagged or the suggested fix was incorrect. I also found many, many more issues that were not flagged.

Unfortunately, many sellers think Grammarly or similar are sufficient and of course, many buyers do not know any difference. I think it is probably useful for things like writing emails and social media posts - the things its ads show - but not for anything beyond that.

Some of my buyers use it. 😝

If they tell me “I’ve already ran it through Grammarly, so it should be easy work for you”, I ask them to send me the version before they used Grammarly so I can properly edit it.

Grammarly makes my job harder because people blindly accept the suggestions—which, as people have said, are very often wrong.

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Never mind the fact that it really isn’t that lucrative. Trust me, it’s my only gig. I am not getting rich.

It definitely takes a high volume of buyers (especially authors with larger works). Maybe you’ll experience a sales rush after the algorithm adjustments 🙂

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Some of my buyers use it. 😝

If they tell me “I’ve already ran it through Grammarly, so it should be easy work for you”, I ask them to send me the version before they used Grammarly so I can properly edit it.

Grammarly makes my job harder because people blindly accept the suggestions—which, as people have said, are very often wrong.

Exactly, when software makes fixes it can make it more difficult as often people say things “like it sounds” or in the way they speak normally. It is easier to understand what they meant in the original rather than what a machine thinks they meant based on its limited parameters.

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Some blog somewhere probably told them it would be easy.

The same blog that advises to use pretty, young girls, and logos for easy buck.

Some blog somewhere probably told them it would be easy.

The same blog that advises to use pretty, young girls, and logos for easy buck.

And writing, especially copywriting. Even if you think it’s spelled “copy writing” because an online proofreader told you that.

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I’m going to have to agree with Woofy31 on this one. I have a harrowing feeling that the majority of these “professional proofreaders” don’t actually proofread their customers’ work… Rather, they use one of the many free programs out there that will do it for them, with limited consideration given toward the writer’s style and/or context of any potential mistakes.

I, personally, love proofreading… But that’s because I enjoy reading the work of others and don’t mind lending a helping hand along the way. 🙂

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Proofread is not an easy task. I’m a Spanish proofreader and sometimes I have to do some research because the text is near to the unintelligible, so I have to correct the information itself. I know that English have some rules for its usage, but in Spanish it’s a little bit more complicated since the rules for the usage of the language are settled by an institution (Royal Spanish Academy) so I have to got that in mind when I’m doing a proofread, since a lot of buyers complain to me stating that “They didn’t want me to change the content of the text”, but I have to explain to them that it isn’t just a thing of proofread but also I have put in context what they write and sometimes I even correct the spelling and punctuation marks, then they understand.

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It definitely takes a high volume of buyers (especially authors with larger works). Maybe you’ll experience a sales rush after the algorithm adjustments 🙂

Right before the algorithm change, I actually raised my prices because I was on the verge of burning out. Still not rich.

My point is, it is neither lucrative, nor easy.

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