The Greatest Thing Since Spell Check
A New to Me Tool for Accurate Writing
Typos of various types suck and I’ve struggled with them my whole life. Moving at the pace of modern business where everything is called done at about 80% they’re common - they still make us look pretty dumb when they get noticed though, especially bad ones. It keeps me up at night after I send out important communications, no matter how many times I’ve reread, even when “peer reviewed.” I have a soft spot for this kind of mistake as it’s one that I make all the time, and I tutored grammar for years for cripes sake, but maybe not any more.
If you’re like me, every time I go to proof read an important document I have this voice in the back of my head that is some blend of my mother and several teachers, “Read your work aloud to catch mistakes.” Okay, weird voice, I did that and I still wrote ‘and’ where I meant an; why do I do this by the way? Here’s the problem, and it’s not a surprise, your brain ever so good at correcting slightly flawed patterns ignores these things. It literally says and in front of me and my brain goes ‘an’ because that’s what should be there. This is a major pitfall with reading other people’s work as well.
So what to do beyond pay a professional proof reader (been there)? Add Read Aloud for Chrome or a similar app and let the computer read your work to you, using text to voice. It’s as easy as dropping your text into a Google Doc and hitting the widget in the top right (or wherever you store your browser app widgets). It’s monotone, not a joy to listen to, but oh my does it get the job done. I have caught revisions in all sorts of things since I started using it where I really shouldn’t have needed revisions if you know what I mean.
Like I said, it’s not a new idea or tool, but it is new to me. My advice is that unless you’re an English teacher start putting all your important writing through a text to voice service immediately. I’ll probably never even send a moderately important email again without it. I was going to proof read it anyway, might as well let Chrome do the reading part for me.