scottallen.com » writing

How To Use Computer Text To Speech To Proof Your Writing

Scott — Mon, 23 May 2011 04:53:39 +0000

Proof reading is a bitch. Typos are the bane of my existence. So how are you expected to proof your own work after you’ve just spent an hour or (heaven forbid) hours staring at it? One of the best techniques that every proof reader knows about is reading your copy backwards. This can be very effective, and if you don’t already employ this technique, I highly recommend it. However reading your text to yourself backwards has its limitations.

In this article I’m going to explain a better way to proof your work by using some of the more human qualities found on your computer.

We all know that most modern computers handily underline your spelling mistakes as they happen. I blame this feature for the utter deterioration of my skelling spills. But computers can’t pick up everything. What if you used father in a sentence but meant to use farther? Neither will be underlined. Or what about special words that ARE underlined but correct like when you wrote McCreepy and meant to say McCreery. (Sorry Scotty). Will your computer honestly tell you when a sentence doesn’t make sense or isn’t Active? (Word tries, but has failed to be effective in my book).

Why is it so hard to proof your own work? You know how it is. You’ve just bled over that newsletter, blog post or article and you’ve read it and re-read it a thousand times. Then you give it to someone, and the first words out of their mouth are why did you spell Microsoft Microshift? Or banal anal? Or what were you trying to say with this paragraph?

Blame your brain.

Law of Closure

Take a look at the two illustrations on the right. You’ll see gaps. But does it matter? Obviously that doesn’t get in the way of your ability to recognize the square and a circle. Right? What you’re seeing are patterns and your brain is connecting the lines for you, automatically. That is what is referred to as the “Law of Closure.” (which should not be confused with finally receiving your divorce or burying a loved one).

Our brains have self-organizing tendencies that automatically fill in the gaps. That’s a nice way of saying your brains lie to your eyes. So while this auto-gap-filler-brain-thing is great when we’re driving a car, catching a ball, or voting for Republicans, what we’re seeing and what we’re perceiving are two different things than what’s actually on the paper…and that’s where typos come from.

Subjective Contours

To the right is another visual exercise. In this illustration (lifted from here) we see a representation of “Subjective Contours” In it you’ll see a white triangle, although clearly there is no white triangle present. Your brain makes the connection based on the patterns it recognizes. It closes the loop. Connects the dots. Fills in the walls. (There is no spoon Neo.).

Call it what you like, but at the end of the day the Law of Closure and Subjective Contours spell MISERY for you as a proof reader. While your eyes are scanning through your words to pickup on any typos, your brain is filling in the gaps. Care is Car. George is Gorge, commas and periods appear exactly where they should. Your brain doesn’t care that what you “meant” to put on the paper is totally different (or slightly different) from what you “actually” put on the paper. It sees only what it wants to see, or what it expects to see! According to your brain everything is “A-OK”. This is a lie. How’s this for a News Flash! Your brain is working against you to keep its friend, your enemy, the typo alive.

It’s time to take control of your lying, cheating brain and kick some Gestalt ass. You need to TRICK your brain into being a better proofer helper. Seriously, another great way to detect errors in your copy isn’t with a bitchen set of books from Chicago and the AP, although those are good to have. What you need is a good set of ears. One ear will do if that’s all you got.

When proofing, our ears can pick up on subtle problems within the text that our eyes and brain conspire to miss. So how do you get your copy read to you? It’s not like you’re going to be able to ask someone to do it, unless you pay them. To the rescue is Apple’s text to speech feature built into OS X.

I have no idea what the origins of Apple’s text to speech are, but I’d like to give the person(s) that thought it up a big wet kiss. Speech is my #1 way of proofing what I write. (Hopefully you find few if any typos in this article!!!)

Here is all you have to do to engage Apple’s text to speech feature on your Mac.

Select the copy you want to have read to you. NOTE: this works in Pages, TextEdit and most writing programs on the Mac. I don’t yet see this feature in WORD. Duh. So right-mouse click on it. Click Speech. Click Start Speaking. Your computer will automatically convert the highlighted text into the spoken word. Now, if you haven’t played with this feature before, you might want to change the voice that your computer uses. You can do this in System Preferences. Click on the Speech microphone. Make sure ALEX is selected. He’s the best. He gives you the most natural sounding reading you’ll find natively on the Mac.

Now that you have Alex reading your text to you, listen to him. Listen carefully. He’ll help you pick up on problems with punctuation and spelling. Yes, sometimes Alex bobbles a word, like Live and Live. Ok, he’s not exactly good at context. That’s fine with me. What he is good at picking up is problems with your sentence structure, typos and punctuation. Now my brain is forced to experience my copy in a whole new way.

Here, you can play an example of an earlier paragraph from this article. I recorded this out of TextEdit using WireTap Studio.

sample_text_to_speech

By listening to what you’ve written you have a better chance of picking out the problems. Today I actually had my computer read back the outline of a new story I’m working on. It took 22 minutes. I was able to record that reading and synch it to my iPhone. Then during my hike this morning I was able to listen to my words read back to me. It was really cool. I brought along a small tape recorder so that I could make note of changes.

Now before you send or post that copy, listen to it. Hear the problems. Hear where your punctuation is off or where you used the incorrect word. You’ll be amazed at how much cleaner your copy can be because of Alex. Of course you could always stick to reading your copy backwards, but then again that’s really not practical while hiking.

Metadata is a Beautiful Thing

Scott — Sat, 19 Feb 2011 18:06:41 +0000

I’m sitting here listening to an Underworld song. I just spent 5 minutes scanning my iTunes for something that fits my mood. I spent another 3 minutes flipping through my Pandora. Nothing I land on seems to be working.

I’m in one of THOSE moods where only the right balance of techno, booze and Red Bull will do. Willie Nelson, Worry B Gone, that’s not techno. Paul Van Dyk, close but… Every bit of music I’m hearing right now has too many goddam memories. I’m being defeated not by the song but by the song’s metadata. And that’s an interesting realization.

Now some of you reading this might actually know who Underworld is. Some might even have suffered blackouts from your Van Dyk-booze/caffeine/E/$100 water-enfused evenings in the basements of Vegas nigh clubs (not that I would know anything about the basements of Vegas night clubs). You’re having a different experience with this article than those who don’t recognize those artists. That’s totally meta.

Typically people talk about metadata in terms of computers. Websites use metadata to help them get found. iTunes uses metadata to catalog your music. However, metadata isn’t just relegated to the digital world. Metadata is everywhere. From a technical standpoint, it can be the keyword and description you add to a file. In the analog world it’s the story within a story. It’s the one thousand unspoken words of a photograph. The more aware of metadata you are, the more interesting and varied things around you can become. And that’s the point.

To take my definition one step further, and at the risk of using a sports reference, metadata is the difference between knowing football and KNOWING football.

When I watch football I see a bunch of guys running around. I know some of the player’s names. I know a few teams. I can drink beer and slap you on the back when your jackwagon of a QB is sacked…But I know people that get a quantum difference out of football by following players, downs, runs, yards, penalties, injuries, sacks and touchdowns. Both of us enjoy the game. However, we enjoy the game to the degree we are tuned into the metadata…the meta experience.

Football is meta. Techno is meta. Willie Nelson is meta. Life is meta.

…just like the photo I chose for this article.

iDrunk

Scott — Wed, 13 May 2009 19:54:20 +0000

Vodka + Jacuzzi + iPod = dead iPod

The wisdom of Strunk & White

admin — Mon, 29 Oct 2007 19:25:37 +0000

If you’ve never taken a couple of hours to sit down and read the book The Elements of Style by Strunk & White, you’re missing a real gem. It’s a great resource for anyone who needs to communicate with anybody else. Basically, every person should read this. There is statement made in the book that summarizes it all up for me:

“Think of the tragedies that are rooted in ambiguity.”

amen!

Dot Com Blues

admin — Wed, 13 Mar 2002 19:37:05 +0000

I wrote this back in 2002 during the first dot com bubble burst.
This is (C) Scott Allen

Hey mom I just got hired by a dot com. We gonna make a million.
Don’t worry that the salary is low, the stock’s going to be worth a trillion.

We’re going on the Internet, we’re gonna be on the web.
Won’t be long till we’re doing interviews just like real celebs.

We’re flying all over the country, we’re hitting all the best scenes.
We’re working all night long, breaking new ground, just like digital marines.

Oh momma these times are tough for techies,
Don’t know what to do.
What happened to my new computer?
What happened to my new shoes?
Oh momma have you heard the news?
Yea, yea baby we’ve got the dot com blues.

The company has been open for 9 months now and hasn’t made a dime.
But that’s okay we’ve got plenty in the bank, and we’ll make it back in good time.

Work has mounted up and we don’t have time to bathe.
I tried to kiss my girlfriend the other day, but she won’t have none of this digital slave.

The last time I went into a meeting I didn’t even have to wear shoes.
But today I’m worried ‘cause something tells me we are going to get some bad news.

God this t3 is really expensive stuff its purchase might have been a little rash. We’re not even up so all it’s good for is Napstering and getting porno trash.

Money is flowing out of this place and cashflow is getting a little thin. Someone joked the other day that paychecks might not be comin’ in again.

Oh we’re in trouble ‘cause the sales force has only sold cars, god they need tutors. They don’t even know the product, hell man they can’t even turn on their computers!

We were making bank. We were rolling in the dough.
It’s just too bad we spent all that cash ‘cause today we’re lettin more people go.

The beginning was so bright, we were masters of our domain.
Now we are fighting to keep our Registrar from shutting us down, again.

So rumor has it that Cisco has a brand new obsession.
That’s right they are roaming the country doing hardware repossession.

Those bastards took our routers today, they killed our entire network.
The CEO slammed his door, the CTO just went berserk.

Oh god what happened to our brave new world? We were so fricken’ cool.
Now it’s the middle of the afternoon, I’m jobless, in the bar, sittin’ on this stool.

What happened to our customers? The chance for that IPO?
We woke up one morning impoverished wondering where did it all go?

Ohh it’s all gone, the money, options, girls, and the drugs. We’re really singing the blues. We partied like rock stars and now all we can afford is cheap booze.

But it can’t be this way, I’ve never had to look for something to do.
I don’t even have a resume and what the hell is a job interview?

Don’t worry momma I’m working for another company and it’s the bomb.
They’re burning all their damn money on bar-b-qs, that’s right baby I just got hired by another dot com!