If you asked me which part of my anatomy I rely on most when I am generating copy – you may not expect me to nominate my ears as my most valuable asset (well, after a superbly creative brain of course). Before you begin to think that I may have missed out on a far more lucrative career in the circus, let me clarify right away that I don’t literally write with them. To be honest, while I find they function perfectly well as auditory receptors, they are poorly designed for gripping a pencil or tapping away at a keyboard.
What use are they to me when it comes to writing then? Well, being partially-sighted means that I use text-to-speech software when I work - every keystroke that I input into my PC is converted into an electronic, synthesised voice – so, proof-reading takes place using my ears rather than my eyes. Interestingly, I find that having my copy read back to me this way actually has a number of advantages; not needing to follow the words with my eyes makes maintaining focus a lot easier and while listening to my unpaid assistant - who sounds like a close relative of Professor Stephen Hawking - can occasionally get a little monotonous, it is easy to spot a badly constructed paragraph, or a sentence that doesn’t scan properly.
While spell-checkers are great for highlighting spelling and grammar issues, there is no substitute for having someone else read your copy aloud – as many people as possible in fact. But if you run out of human-beings in the form of colleagues or friends willing to give you their time, you might try switching on the basic text reading technology that most computers have built in.
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