Tech Tool Tip: Speech to Text

A quick tip: If your computer has a speech-to-text functionality, use it.

You can catch so many mistakes by listening to the computer generated voice as it reads the words exactly as written. Embarrassing mistakes that can be avoided if you use this tool:

A screen grab of the Mac OSX tool.

• double words
• misspelled words
• missing dialogue tags
• overly strong emotions that don't belong in the email to your boss (I remember sending a couple of those while at Intel.)
• unusual word flow

Lately, I've been using it extensively while revising scenes. I'll highlight-a-few-paragraphs/listen/correct and repeat as needed, then move on to the next set of paragraphs until the end. As a final test, I listen to the entire scene before moving on to my next hatchet job scene.

So, give this tech tool a try, you might just add it to your toolbox.