Many people hire proofreaders, and are scorned for wasting their money. And yet proofreading services are still in high demand. Does this mean that people are being fooled by a kitten in a lion’s cage? Or is there something to this whole “proofreading professional” service?

What do proofreaders check?

These days a proofreader can be called upon for many tasks. People usually think they are used for just academic work, but there are very intelligent people who are using them to check websites. There are some very smart people who use them to check short adverts. And there are still those in the academic community who use them to check essays, journal entries and research papers.

What do proofreaders actually do?

They are checking for spelling and grammar mistakes. But, they are also checking for flow and consistency problems too. They are checking for awkward phrasing and things such as overly complex compound sentences that are grammatically correct but that are hard to read.

Why do so many people use them?

For example, a person may spend days crafting his or her new website, and check it thoroughly. Then on the day of its launch, he or she receives hundreds of messages asking what a certain sentence means (because it is confusing due to it being grammatically incorrect). This is embarrassing and negatively affects that person’s online and public reputation. That is why someone in such a situation will use a cheap proofreading service to sift through the website and pick out those mistakes that he/she missed, but that everybody else will not miss.

Stand too close to a painting and all you see are the small cracks

Look at a very old painting that has cracked. Now move very close to it and you will see hundreds (probably thousands) of tiny imperfections and cracks due to age. You will also notice that the bigger cracks and imperfections are less obvious. As you look closely at the center, you miss the big cracks in the corners. People who work with text do exactly the same thing. They are so close to their work (not physically, but mentally/focus-wise) that they can only see the smaller problems. They miss the bigger problems, and good proofreading services can help to correct this.

Author bio: Robert Hudson is a writer and proofreader. He generally writes on different topics and also he is writing for Essay4students.com which provides professional essay writing help for everyone.