Technology Marketing by Tatum MarketingJust another WordPress weblog

Early on in my writing career, I thought my proofreading was meticulous. I’d read and re-read my material over and over again, because I myself judged others by their writing skills.

The problem was, I relied on my eyes which are super-sensitive to the tiniest of errors in other peoples’ work. However, I quickly learned these same eyes are extremely forgiving when it comes to my own errors, auto-correcting flagrant issues, subtleties the average person would miss, and clumsy sentences that break the natural rhythm in the piece.

A writer whom I have great respect for once recommended that I invest in a software that would read the text back to me, but since my employer was on a very tight budget, I didn’t pursue the idea at first.

Instead, I relied on old-fashioned, unreliable tactics like setting the piece aside for a day before final proofreading, asking others to review my work, re-reading the piece backwards, and the worst of all methods, relying on Microsoft Word’s spell checker.

After several months of doing things the hard way, I decided to see how much a text-to-speech software would put me back. A quick online search turned up an incredibly inexpensive yet powerful software called TextAloud by NextUp.com.

For less than thirty bucks, this nifty software will read e-mail, web pages, reports, and more, aloud on your PC.  You can even save your daily reading to an mp3 or Windows media file for playback on an iPod, PocketPC, or TV using Tivo’s Home Media Option.

Being the cheapskate that I am, I took advantage of their free 15-day trial, using it to review online promotions and articles that were already in their “finished” state.

Needless to say, TextAloud caught at least one error in every single piece. With eyes wide open, I shelled out the money, saving me tons of time and my good reputation.

The default voices that come with the software sound robotic, but if you find that annoying you can download other free voices or upgrade to natural-sounding voices like I did.

Nowadays, every piece I create undergoes the scrutiny of TextAloud and my ears.

If you’re responsible for writing web content or other marketing material, I dare you to try it. If you’re like me, you’ll be humbled by the errors you find.

Let me know if it helps!

Sue Anderson
Marketing Lure, Inc.