I use a text-to-speech program, TextAloud, to read to me. I also bought some ‘voices’ that were easier to understand. I use it especially when I have a section of a manuscript that I can feel there is something wrong, I just can’t find it. Hearing someone read it aloud helps me to find it. I could read it aloud but well, I am lazy.
I used the program to read my short story to me. I found four places that were ‘off’ and was able to fix them. I will print it out tonight and send it off to the competition tomorrow. Way cool and groovy, eh?
Wonder if sealing that envelope will be as odd as sealing the box??
Did you really find the Text Aloud program useful? The business contacted me to plug it in my blog, and I insisted on testing it first. They pushed it as a marvelous new method for PROOFREADING. I expected it to announce commas, periods, capital letters, etc. When I pointed out to the person who had contacted me that the program is useless for proofreading, he got all huffy and defensive. Then I explained that the lack of intonation in a computer-generated voice does not help with editing, either, because the meaning of a sentence, or even a phrase, is missing. Reading your work aloud is great, though. When you find a place that disturbs your breath flow, you know there’s a problem. A computer just can’t do that for you.
I found it useful when used with the specialized voices. They have some intonation, responding to punctuation such as ? or !. Then I can set the pauses at ends of sentences or after a comma.
I’ve tried a wide range of text-to-speech programs. I liked Deskbot but it only could handle small amounts of text at a time. And the voices for it are very computerized. It is fun though, for timers and reading short clips.
TextAloud does what I need it to do but only with the specialized (and expensive!!) voices.