Are Young People Better at Proofreading?

To proofread a document well, the quickest and most effective solution – but also the most expensive – is simply to use professional proofreading services.  

Short of recruiting trained and experienced experts in professional proofreading, though, what can you do to improve the quality of your writing or, for that matter, get better at proofreading?

Until quite recently, any answer to this question would have been highly subjective. That’s to say, every writer, proofreader, or editor would have had their own personal thoughts and judgments about what constituted the main skills a proofreader requires, to do a good job.

However, in 2015, an article published by M. A Shafto and P. B. Tchounwou in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health systematically examined questions relating to both professional proofreading and amateur proofreading, as well as differences in proofreading between young and older adults.

On the question of what skills a person should have in order to perform well as a proofreader, Shafto and Tchounwou’s article drew attention to the importance of stored knowledge, language processing, and attentional resources. At the same time, the authors stated:

In addition to being a practical skill, proofreading is also a complex cognitive function that relies on both core language processes and higher-level cognitive abilities related to attention and problem-solving... During proofreading, detecting and correcting errors relies on language comprehension and production.

On reading this, as well as the other scientific insights offered by Shafto and Tchounwou, one quickly begins to see how much value professional proofreading services offer to students, academics, and businesspeople.

Given the complexity of the skills required to proofread a document effectively, it becomes self-evident that making use of experts in professional proofreading comes with a high return on investment.

However, an important issue exposed by Shafto and Tchounwou – which is also implied by the complex skills required for good proofreading – is the possibility that young people are “better” at proofreading compared to old people. In fact, the authors addressed this directly in their study, reporting that – based on their experimental evidence – young people do indeed appear to be better proofreaders:

Older adults ... were impaired relative to young adults when proofreading grammar or meaning errors, especially for difficult passages. Additionally, older adults were [less effective] at detecting errors compared to correcting ... errors, in keeping with previous research.

With all this said, it’s worth emphasising that the participants in Shafto and Tchounwou’s study were not all professional proofreaders. Therefore, it is only possible to conclude on the basis of their findings that – among untrained and inexperienced proofreaders – young people tend to be better due to their greater attentional resources and their ability to concentrate for longer periods of time.

Critically, among experienced and trained proofreaders who provide professional proofreading services, there is no evidence that age has a significant impact on performance.

For this reason, when you order your next proofreading service, we do not recommend that you consider age as a factor when selecting your proofreader. Instead, there are far more consequential factors to take into account, including the proofreader’s level of expertise, experience, and dedication.