simonyoungwriters.com

Days after deadline and going slightly crazy, I discovered a great proofing tool late one night the other week.

Normally I find it helpful to read my stories out loud. It helps you not only discover goofy grammatical errors, but also find bits that don’t “flow” properly.

But at 1am, I didn’t feel like reading out my 3000-word story, and besides, I might wake up my wife in the next room.

So, I used my Mac’s built-in speech engine to read me the story. Not bad at all!

In fact, it was better than if I had read it myself, because that computer doesn’t miss anything. And because it’s emotionless, you’re focussed on the words, which is all your reader will have (okay, and the pictures).

It’s not a Mac-only solution, there’s also software like Ultra-Hal (not sure if it’s anything to do with 2001:A Space Odyssey) which works just as well.