Can Text To Audio Readers Help Writers Fix Grammar?

My friend gave me permission to pass this on to you. Normally, I don't share the 'insider' stuff from my associates - but I can't improve on this by rewriting it :)

>
> Brenna, I have heard a lot of people comment on how the auditory programs
> read the text and make editing easier. Is this what you are referring to?
> Does it help?
>

Yes. ReadPlease is a text-to-speech program. Sadly, it only works on PC and not MAC, so our MAC users can't take advantage of this particular one. You get a 30 day free trial of the full program and the smaller version for free. The smaller version will do about 2000 words of text at a time. The full version can have PROPHECY dumped into it and take it all! The full version costs $60 after the 30 days, but I find it worth it. There are also add-ons to improve the voices, which I don't find necessary.

Now, does it help? YES! The human brain has the wonderful capacity to correct and complete broken patterns. It's one of our greatest gifts. For an author, it's one of our greatest downfalls. Why? We KNOW what the sentence SHOULD read. Our minds make us think it does say that. It doesn't...by a longshot, but we can't see it, because our brain corrects for us, even when we don't want it to.

ReadPlease is a machine. It's not going to correct for you. If you typed 'if' instead of 'is,' which Word won't tell you, because both are words in English, you might not see it on a visual pass, but
you'll HEAR it when it's read back to you. If you have a typo, you'll hear it, because the word won't sound right. What won't it find? Homonym errors, because both words sound the same! Punctuation errors! BUT, it highlights each word as it reads. If you increase font, like I do, you see a lot of these as it reads, as well.

Down sides? There aren't many, since you can choose the voice you like and you can set the speed, pause, copy/paste corrections right into what you're doing to double check them... It does have a few isms when
dealing with words that have two possible pronunciations. For instance, bow is always pronounced as if someone is bowing to a king,
even if you meant a bow and error. You get used to that. And, if you make up terms for your world, the pronunciation the machine makes for them may not match what you had in mind, but you get used to that,
too.

Brenna
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http://www.brennalyons.com http://www.myspace.com/brennalyons
Bedtime stories that your mother never told you at bedtime. A look behind the scenes of some of our favorite fairy tales. MAMA'S TALES available now from PHAZE ONCE UPON A TIME, YESTERDAY with Gregory L. Norris, coming from UTM













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