Never underestimate the importance of proofreading papers.
Blindly following the advice of Microsoft Word’s spelling and grammar check could worsen the quality of writing, a recent University of Pittsburgh study shows.
In the study, 33 undergraduates proofread a business letter — some using Word’s spelling and grammar check, and some with the software deactivated.
Without using the software, those with higher verbal SAT scores made an average of five errors, compared to 16 errors when they ran spelling and grammar check. Lower scorers made an average of 17 errors when using the software, compared with 12.3 errors without it.
Dennis Galletta, a professor of information systems at University of Pittsburgh’s Katz Business school, said the results surprised him. He expected students with higher verbal scores to perform significantly better than those with lower verbal scores when using spelling and grammar check. Both groups performed almost equally poorly.
The problem lies in the subjects’ trust of the software, said Galletta, who led the study.
“I think it’s a matter of four factors,” he said. “One, people are in a hurry. Two, they’re overconfident. Three, they make mistakes. Four, the software isn’t perfect.”
The students proofread a letter containing spelling and grammatical errors. Word did a great job correcting misspelled words, Galletta said, but overlooked other types of errors.
The check missed words used in the wrong context, such as “Web sight.”
The software also flagged some text that was correct. For example, in the sentence “What decision should the organization’s managers make based on these findings?” the program suggests changing “managers” to “manager’s.”
The results of the study didn’t surprise NU journalism Prof. Rich Gordon.
“I tell people all the time not to rely on spell check,” he said. “It may catch something you would not have caught, but it will also flag things as potentially wrong that aren’t wrong. If you just blindly follow the recommendations of spell check, you will introduce errors into your copy.”
Problems arise when students substitute the software for proofreading.
“I usually trust (the software), but sometimes I completely disagree with it,” said Aashia Bade, a Weinberg sophomore. “I usually go back and reread it.”
Emily Abramson prefers to proofread without the software.
“I feel confident in my own grasp of the English language without using spelling and grammar check,” the Weinberg junior said. “Sometimes the generated sentences don’t make sense — it’s too much bother.”
Barbara Shwom, director of The Writing Place and a lecturer in the writing program, tells her students to turn off the grammar check.
“My experience is that the grammar check is fairly useless,” Shwom said. “Grammar is highly contextual, and a computer can only tell if something is wrong by using a certain algorithm.”
Shwom tells her students to use spell check but said it was no substitute for a dictionary.
“I don’t see people that are worse off because of spell check, but spell check would not do nearly as good of a job as proofreading,” Shwom said. “Proofreading is clearly going to get you the best results.”
