Jun
6th
2017
This text-to-speech thing they added... · 11:34am Jun 6th, 2017
...is amazing! As amusing as it is on its own, its value as a proofreading tool really can’t be understated. I can’t believe I didn’t think of doing something similar on my own. Having your own work read back to you in an emotionless robotic voice that’s forced to read things exactly as they appear really helps to locate missing or transposed words, or place commas or other punctuation where a pause is needed. I’ll definitely use it as I go about editing PH / HK / Exchange for their physical versions.
Also, it’s heartening to hear that the voice can pronounce “maregasm” correctly. Ah, the wonders of technology.
Was there ever any doubt?
I’ve been running text-to-speech stuff on my own writing to listen to while I sleep, and lemme tell you, it really is a helpful thing. For some reason, text-to-speech during the early phases of sleep can be remembered just like that. I think I saw Knighty working on T2S a while back during a Twitter post, real excited that it works as well as shown in the test video. Welcome to the world of text-to-speech, my friend.
4561471
Nice! Really, the thought of it actually being useful never even occurred to me since it technically slows down your reading speed having to wait for the speech to finish. I ran it through TLHB just for comedic value, but ended up finding and correcting 3 errors as a result! Crazy...
4562331
See, but slower is better.
Not so slow that nothing gets done, mind you, but slow enough that you can pick things out. When it goes slower you mind has more time to process what it is seeing and hearing, thus you being able to find more mistakes.
How do you use the text to speech thing?
4563071
Go to a chapter of any story and click on a paragraph, then click the little speaker button that appears. How it works and what it sounds like varies depending on the OS of your computer and the web browser you use.