AI Policies | Ethical AI Use | AI Proofreading | Humanizing AI Text | AI Limitations
In this blog, we’ll explore how to use ChatGPT for proofreading and correcting grammatical errors in your work. Most universities allow the use of AI tools for proofreading, however, there are strict guidelines you are expected to follow. It’s important to understand what is allowed and what is not allowed when using AI tools for proofreading your papers and disserations.
1. Bad proofreading practices
Let’s begin by understanding what’s not permitted when using AI for proofreading.
1.1 Don’t copy paste
One of the common mistakes students make is asking ChatGPT to proofread their text, and then copying and pasting the entire output directly into their document. Don’t do this. This approach will be considered plagiarism, since you are essentially presenting AI-generated content as your own.
Let me show you what I mean. Let’s say I am writing an essay on social media and I want to use ChatGPT to proofread my text. I go to ChatGPT and use the prompt: “Please proofread and revise the text”, and then paste the passage I copied from my document next to the prompt. As you can see below, ChatGPT has made corrections and adjustments to the text and has given me a revised version. Now, I am just going to copy and paste this revised version straight into my document. This is a big mistake and please don’t do this. It is very likely that my document will be flagged by AI content detectors, and I will be accused of plagiarism.
1.2 Don’t upload the entire document
One of the big mistakes people make is uploading their entire document and asking ChatGPT to proofread it all at once. This approach is not advisable. Let me show you what I mean. I’m uploading my final draft and asking ChatGPT to proofread and revise the whole thing. I am also telling ChatGPT that once it’s done, I want the final corrected version ready to download! ChatGPT does what it is told, and now I have a corrected document that contains the revised version of the text. I download and submit this revised version to the university. Never ever do this. ChatGPT may make hundreds of corrections to your text, making it difficult for you to keep track of the changes. Always work on one paragraph at a time. This will help you to stay in total control of your work.
1.3 Turn off data sharing settings
Most universities don’t like your papers and dissertation materials being used for training AI systems like ChatGPT. Every time you process a piece of text through ChatGPT, it may retain your content in its memory and use it for training in the future. This can be very risky. For example, if you are working on groundbreaking research, you don’t want your work to be shared publicly until you have published your work in a reputed scientific journal.
To safeguard your sensitive content, it’s crucial to turn off data-sharing settings. Let’s see how to do this. Head over to Settings, this will be under your profile and look for Data Controls. Now you need to turn this option off. This way, your text won’t be stored or used for training purposes by ChatGPT.
2. Good proofreading practices
Now you know how not to proofread using ChatGPT, let’s look at good proofreading practices. The best way to proofread your text is to ask ChatGPT for a list of mistakes. Then, go through the list one by one and decide if you want to make those changes or not. Let me show you how it works. I’m going to ask ChatGPT to act as a proofreader and provide a list of spelling, tense, grammar, and punctuation errors in the text.
ChatGPT has processed the text and has given me a list of possible errors. Let’s go through them one by one and fix them in the text at the same time.
For example, there’s a spelling mistake: I misspelled the word “delving”, lets fix it in the text. There’s a tense mistake, it should be “social media has become” not “social media become”, lets fix it. There is a grammar issue where I left out a preposition, it should be “essential to understand” not “essential understand”, let’s fix it.
ChatGPT is telling me that I should either have a comma or a conjunction between the words “globe” and “woven”. I prefer to have a conjunction instead of a comma. Let’s fix it. As you can see, I was able to maintain full control over my writing and decide which ChatGPT suggestions to take and which to leave behind. This is the correct way to use AI tools like ChatGPT for proofreading your work.
There are other things you can ask ChatGPT too. For example, let’s say your tutor wanted you to write your paper in active voice, but you’re not sure if your whole text follows this rule. No problems, you can double-check with ChatGPT. I am going to ask ChatGPT to “Act as a proofreader and list any sentences written in passive voice”.
As you can see, ChatGPT tells you that all the sentences in the text are written in active voice and there is nothing to worry about. This gives you a sense of reassurance that you have done your job properly.
3. Acknowledging the use of AI
Now it has become standard practice to acknowledge the use of AI in your work. You are expected to add a section either in the acknowledgments or appendix clearly explaining the name of the tool used, and how it was used along with a list of prompts. Here is an example declaration.
✔ Example declaration of the use of AI tools in your work
I acknowledge the use of ChatGPT, version 4 to proofread my final draft on 20th November 2024. The prompt used to generate a response in ChatGPT was “Act as a proofreader and provide a list of spelling, tense, grammar, and punctuation errors in the text”. The ChatGPT conversation can be found in this link: https://chagpt.com/share/673c5fc
You can even go a step further and include a shareable link to your ChatGPT conversation. This helps your supervisor to see exactly how you used AI tools in your work. You can generate a sharable link by clicking on the dots next to the conversation, and then clicking “share”. You can generate a public shareable link by clicking the “Create Link” button. When your supervisor opens the link on a browser, he will be able to see the entire ChatGPT conversation history.
4. Falsely accused of AI cheating
These days, a lot of universities have AI detectors built into their submission systems. Sometimes, even if you’ve used AI tools responsibly, you might be falsely accused of submitting AI-generated text. That’s why it’s super important to keep a copy of your original document before making any changes suggested by AI. This way, if anything comes up, you will be able to prove that the work genuinely belongs to you .
5. AI vs Human proofreaders
Before finishing, I would like to talk about the importance of using Human readers to proofread your work. Sure, AI like ChatGPT is fast and free, but it can’t truly replace a human touch. ChatGPT can be inconsistent and unreliable at times. For example, if you give ChatGPT the same passage to proofread twice, you might get two different results. So, which version is better? That’s the tricky part.
Human proofreaders explain why they make changes, while ChatGPT often struggles to do so clearly. It’s great at catching basic grammar mistakes and typos, but when it comes to more complex edits, it’s hit or miss since ChatGPT doesn’t fully grasp the nuances of language.
Furthermore, it sometimes messes up citations and quotations in your text, which is not good, particularly if you are using ChatGPT to proofread your research paper. So, we highly recommend using a human proofreader whenever possible. Most importantly, please do not ask ChatGPT to automatically fix everything for you.
| AI Proofreading | Human Proofreading |
|---|---|
| ✔ Free to use ✔ Fast ✖ Basic editing ✖ Inconsistent ✖ Doesn’t explain the changes ✖ Messes up citations and quotes ✖ Doesn’t understand the nuances of language | ✖ Costly ✖ Slow turnaround ✔ Complex editing ✔ Consistent ✔ Clearly explain the changes ✔ Doesn’t mess up citations and quotes ✔ Edited text is smoother and sophisticated |
6. Summary
When using AI tools like ChatGPT for proofreading, always make sure it lists out the issues so you can review and decide how to fix them yourself. That way, you stay in control of your writing! Most importantly, don’t let ChatGPT make large changes to your text to a point where you no longer recognize the original version. We highly recommend using a human proofreader whenever possible. If you compare a text proofread by a human with one edited by AI, you’ll spot the difference right away. Human-edited text is smoother and more sophisticated, with changes that go beyond surface-level corrections.
