I would allow students to use the service, but with a lot of caveats. Proofreading is mind-numbing work (I used to proofread/copyedit for a living), and I see little creative about it. Students need to be able to proofread their own work, since these proofreading services aren't always available (so that email message they need to send to their manager or a customer isn't riddled with typos).

I don't proofread my own work before I submit it to journals or publishers. I know occasionally this probably hurts me in the eyes of some reviewers, but it doesn't seem to have been a major issue. And I'm not willing to put in an enormous amount of time on something that's supposedly being judged for it's creative merits.

I do try to proofread things like letters of reference I'm sending out for students, or tenure/promotion letters. (But I have to say that I'm thinking these outsourced options are something I'm going to look into. My time is worth a lot to me—like it is to most of our students—and if I can save an hour or two of proofreading time to put into another, more important project, one that pays more than a few dollars per page, that's worth something to me.)

Now, though, I'll have to start thinking about issues of economic access. Can I ethically grade students on extensive typos if I know some students are outsourcing that work? I don't penalize excessively for typos, but I do take off a handful of points if I see extreme problems, at the level of one every couple of sentences on what's supposed to be a polished, final draft to send to a client

These are some interesting questions. We encourage students to use writing centers to assist them with their writing. But writing centers specifically position themselves not to be proofreading services. Their goal is to help the writer. And that's the response I would give to students. The purpose of peer review--and, indeed, writing classes in general--is to help the student become a better writer, not fix the writing.

So I personally would say no since an online proofreading service would likely only make corrections with no discussion about why they made those suggestions for change. I'd also be afraid in introductory composition classes that the student would rely on the service without evaluating the corrections.

The only exception I can think of off the top of my head might be requiring it for an advanced class on editing in a writing major. Requiring them to submit to a service could give them experience in seeing how professional copyeditors respond to and markup a draft. That is assuming that students could find a good, professional service, although determining how to find a good service and learning to evaluate them would be good, too, for such a class.

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Charlie | cyberdash

Maybe this should be, the more things change, the more they stay the same.

Back in the day, I started at U of Washington in 1980 (man, over a quarter century ago!) after 2+ years at a community college. We were still using typewriters, yes, typewriters then. One of my brothers and one of my sisters were also attending UW at the same time. My brother was a lousy writer, at least at the sentence level. He turned in a psychology paper and flunked. His next paper, he had a professional typist and he received an 'A'. I'm assuming this typist not only typed properly for him (pre-desktop computer days. I was learning on punch cards at the time) but also cleaned things up at the sentence level. These services were pretty common at the time, and I don't recall that anyone frowned upon them. Any other old farts (damn, I hate being an old fart) out there with memories of what was thought of typing services?

bradley || bleckblog.org

I wouldn't require students to use this service, but I wonder about how one would enforce a prohibition on the use of such services. I imagine that most professors encourage students to read each other's work, make comments, and yes, even proofread. Maybe proofreadings isn't the primary purpose of having students workshop their drafts (I hope it isn't), but surely one doesn't prohibit students from pointing out errors during the workshop process.

My point is that it is already acceptable for a student to have someone else do proofreading. The only differences here are that 1) the students are paying and 2) hopefully they are getting better proofreading than they would get from their dorm mates.

The interesting question to me has to do with the many, many professors who grade written assignments primarily on grammatical errors (not only in English but across the curriculum). What exactly are they grading now?

"Any other old farts (damn, I hate being an old fart) out there with memories of what was thought of typing services?"

I don't know. You are pretty old ;-)

Actually, in 1983 when I started as an undergraduate, everyone was using those electronic typewriters with the correction button that you had to press for every keystroke backwards you wanted to change. I think that at that time, typing services might have been permissible.

Then the next year after I finished first year comp, Cornell got tons of first generation Mac toasters and my friends started telling me about this "cool" word processor thingy for writing papers. LOL

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Charlie | cyberdash

I've been asked to proof and edit student essays for an academic competition.  The prize is scholarships.  I know this is common practice, but somehow it still seems like plagiarism -- the student presents him/herself as someone who can spell, think, use grammar, etc., while what is really presented is the quality of the proofreader.

Has anyone else been put in this position?  I hate to think education has come to this. 

Not to mention the fact that some of these proofreading services may be a front for a paper mill. Students should read the fine print very carefully to see if the company keeps a copy of their paper, and if they do, why.

when I first went to college I remember seeing lots of fliers around campus for typing services. I remember seeing ads for typing services well into the early 90s. My first word processor was one of those Brother machines with a 3.5 floppy, a small monochrome screen, and a built in printer (basically the guts of an electric typewriter). It had spell check, cut and paste, etc. The best part of it was the print quality. It looked liked I typed my paper instead of printing it out on a computer dot matrix printer. I like to think that the presentation helped my grades a bit. In any event it was pretty popular with my room mates and friends throughout my undergraduate years.

I'm at Georgia Tech and we have a fair number of international students. This semester we're looking at reading and writing interfaces in my fyw courses. I've had two students from India relate stories about how they've had to adapt to the ubiquity of computers here in the U.S. Apparently the Indian educational system still values handwritten papers and reports. These are very smart students and they noted that yes, they used computers in India, etc. but that computers aren't the preferred or even accepted tool for completing papers and reports.

This site has to be seen to be believed:
Essay Fraud.org
I'm still trying to figure out if this is a spoof site or not...

Check out Barton's gaming blog at Armchair Arcade.