Two Tricks to Better Proofreading
Anyone who writes a lot must also spend a lot of time proofreading. But if you're anything like me, you probably find it hard to see the flaws in your own work. I've found two tricks that help me a lot.
The first trick is sort of boring: just give it time. If I put a chapter down and come back to it a week later, it's much easier for me to see the flaws.
The second trick is kind of awesome: get the computer to read it out loud to you.
Yes, you can get your computer to read your writing to you. Here's how:
Mac / iOS
On Mac and iOS it couldn't be any easier, because the operating system has text to speech built-in.
On a Mac, just select the text you want read, right click (or control-click) and select "Speech" -> "Start Speaking."
This works in almost any program, but if you happen to find a program that won't let you do this, just copy/paste the text into TextEdit and try it there.
On iOS, same idea, just select text and tap "Speak."
Even though this is built-in, a lot of people have never noticed it.
For something a little beefier, I've heard that VoiceDream is fantastic as well.
Web
If you Google "Text To Speech" you'll find a handful of results, but the best one is definitely the IBM/Watson text to speech demo.
Copy/paste your text into the demo, select a voice, and hit "Speak." It's got a great voice, more natural sounding than any of the others I've tried.
Windows
Windows has text to speech built-in as well. I'm not a Windows user, but I was able to easily find a couple tutorial videos on Youtube. Here are the last couple versions of Windows:
Android
I'm also not an Android user, but Google has some great text to speech support as well. You can read all about it on GreenBot.
Whichever platform you're on, there's definitely a text to speech option. I hope you'll try this out, and that it's as helpful for you as it has been for me.
