Proper VS. Projective morphism

Despite the obvious differences in definitions, I have a very strong impression that any theorem whose assumption requiring the morphism to be projective can be replaced by the morphism to be proper.

I learn algebraic geometry theorems mainly from the book by Hartshorne, but for the limited times I consult EGA for a general statement, I realize that the projective condition can always be weakened by properness.

My questions are rather soft:

Is this impression always correct? Or, are there any perticular situations/theorems which I must be very careful about projective assumption? Or, what is on earth the reason make these two concepts so close such that one can usually replaced one by the other.

The followings are something I am aware of:

(1)EGA and Hartshorne have incompatible definitions of projective morphism.

(2)Proper morphism is closed to projective morphism by Chow's lemma. -- However, I had never seen an application of this lemma in a non-conceptual way.

(3)From algebraic geometry perspective, I could understand the projective condition: it benefits people to start proof from a projective space. From complex geometry perspective, I could understand proper condition: properness is a very important tool in analysis -- however, I do not know how does it directly benefit the proof algebraically.

Solution 1:

It's true that in many cases projective assumptions can be weakened to properness without changing results, but not always. The key difference to my mind is that projective varieties have ample line bundles, but proper varieties need not.

One consequence of this, for example, is that on a projective variety, no effective cycle is numerically trivial; on a proper variety, this need not be the case. (Hartshorne Appendix B has an example.)