Thread: Proof Reading

I'm normally quite careless when trying to type anything (sales letters, articles, or anything else).

But when proof reading I lose my concerntration and just skim through it leaving the errors in there.

One the best ways round this is to use a text to speech program which reads your text back to you.

I believe there are some free programs out there (the most basic will do).

My favourite is textaloud (but it's a paid for program).

You'll be amazed at how many mistakes you've made.

Regards

Yes i totally agree and i have lost count of how many times i've made mistakes without realising
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I'm sure to search for this program now thank you.
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Thannks for this tip. I will search for some free text to speech converter software.

Many computers come with a free text to speech program as a feature.
It is a good idea. However, to do a thorough proof read of your material, you need to do the following things:

1. Use spell check and ensure it is set to the correct language.
2. If it is English, is it US, UK or AU English?
3. Reread your content again closely, checking whether you have made any errors.
4. Read your content yet again but this time read it aloud and slowly, so you can digest it and make sure it reads exactly the way you want it to.
5. Replace words if the same word appears too many times as repetition isn't inducive to high calibre material.
6. Use spell check again.


**After each step, obviously fix any errors that you find.***

These are the steps I carry out for each and every piece of writing I do.

Also, if you're writing content for publication, run it through copyscape to ensure you haven't plagiarised someone else's work.

You can also ask someone for a second opinion if you're unsure of your capabilities or just need fresh eyes.

If you don't like proof reading, you can also outsource this aspect of your work to someone you have confidence in.

A sort of free text to speech program you may wish to try is River past.

I does say that it's just a trial version and once the period is over you're prompted for registration or you have some sort of restriction.

I don't actually know what this restriction is because it always seemed to keep on converting speech to text in the normal way.

I use text aloud now but that costs money

River past is a good one for those who don't want to spend money. Athough they may have changed it since I downloaded it about a year ago and you may not be able to use it after the trial period anymore.

I use a paid speech to text program called Dragon Naturally Speaking and it is really good for article writing. However, the down side is that you need to do a lot more editing as it interprets words very strangely at times.

Hey Eric, I am actually a teetotaler. That is partly because I hate the taste of booze and partly due to my cupboard full of meds.
I have selected the American version of English because most of my articles and books are written for that market.
I have also tried talking in an American accent and the funny thing is that it recognises words better in some cases when I do that.
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So work that one out. I am using Dragon 10.1 which is the most recent release too.
However, I think it is because I edit and type at the same time that I seem to type faster than the program. But will see how I go. They say it can take 6 months to fully train it.

One other thing you might want to use is a spellchecker.

When using an office program it has an automatic spellchecker .

But what if your using something like notepad which hasn't got one.

The best solution I found was tinyspell (its free) which shows typos everywhere you type.

Best to set it not to open on startup as it can remember the last word you type including a password (not good). Only activate it when you need it.

I believe we talked about spell checkers. That is only one tiny step in a proof reading process.
If you use notepad, copy and paste it into word to spell check and then copy/paste it back again.

Yes of course.

It is only a small step. And yes you can put it into word. But that means correcting a large number of typos afterwards which takes time.

Using tinyspell allows you to correct it as you go. (improving efficiency)

fair enough. I will check it out but my own accuracy is extremely good on its own that I don't use those extra tools as a rule because they take extra time.
But it would be useful to others who may not be as familiar with spelling.
Thanks for the tip.