New trick - using read aloud features to proofread

I tried a new trick today with a draft of a story I had written - using Microsoft Edge's "read aloud" feature to read the text to me (I saved the draft as a plain text file and then used the browser to open it).

Worked like a champ - by listening to the text being read to me (and purposefully not following the text with my eyes) I was able to identify several places where I had misspelled a word that wasn't caught by spell check, as well as words that I simply forgot to type and words that I accidentally typed twice.

Two thumbs up, highly recommended!

Very nice find. I had been reading stories into a voice recorder for playback, but that technique was subject to the pitfalls you mention. I'll be trying this from now on. Cheers.

Thanks for the tip. I'm writing a draft in the free part of prowritingaid, and using a Firefox extension to read it back to me. It takes a while to get used to the automated voice, otherwise it's working well.

This sounds like a good idea, but I'm not sure how to do it. What steps are needed to open a Word file with Edge, and how do you switch on the 'read aloud' function?

If you are using Word, you may already have that available in the program: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/listen-to-your-word-documents-5a2de7f3-1ef 4-4795-b24e-64fc2731b001

Otherwise, here are the browser instructions: https://www.guidingtech.com/how-to-use-read-aloud-in-microsoft-edge/

Thanks - I've got it working now! I'll just have to remember to do it a section at a time; the first time I tried it, it got to a division I'd put between two sections, and started reading out 'asterisk, asterisk, asterisk...' for the whole line!

I might try this. Thanks!

I've been doing this occasionally using Google Translate. The voice is rather devoid of emotion, but it does help to find overlooked typos or sentences that don't quite work.

Thanks for the suggestion. I tried it in Word and it is very useful as an aid to proof reading. The quality of the reading is quite good, with only an occasional slight error. It was good at dealing with questions but did not give any additional emphasis to italicised words. The (female) voice used was very pleasant to listen to.