Hi.
Intensively revising here, it reminded me of a redundant question I now and then ask myself whenever I find myself in this very process. And so, today, I decided to post it.
Whenever I edit intensively, I get to a point where the words start to mix up on the page. I read, but I sometimes donât even read what is actually there. Or I spot awfully formulated sentences, only to discover (after swimming out of the consequent confusion - and that B* can sometimes really stick) that these sentences were actually even better than just fine. It is like dyslexia (I actually only suppose it is - I donât have dyslexia) but at the sentencesâ scaleâŠ
It ainât the letters that are getting flipped and shifted, but rather the words.
So, the question is:
Does anyone know of a good trick that could allow to reset oneâs brain without resorting to taking a break every time. (If it happens after 5 or 6 hours, taking a break is not a problem. The problem is that after that, it only takes a short time for the phenomenon to kick back in. Pretty annoyingâŠ)
A special way to read the text until fully rested the next day?
Or reading upside down?..
Or⊠well, I actually have no idea, donât I. I wouldnât ask otherwise.
You get the idea ?
Happens to me when I write. To overcome that I wait months before reading a draft by which I have forgotten what I meant to say and must now rely solely on what I did say.
I do have dyslexia and one-fingered typing pecking at the keyboard makes it worse. Touch typing with my eye gaze on the computer screen breaks that pecking feedback and I donât skip words or make two meny spellnig misteaks.
Changing fonts helps a bit. Really changing, different typeface, size (within reasonable limits), maybe even colors. Or reading on a different medium, like paper or an e-ink display. In different positions. E.g. my brain works differently when I lie down.
I change the font in my Preferences:Editing (Options: Editing ? Donât know WindowsâŠ) and then do a complete Documents->Convert Formatting to Default⊠through my entire draft. Iâll change up the size, whether itâs proportional or monospaced, etc. It helps some.
This. I started using the speech option on Scrivener and it has worked wonders to catch things I donât do. I found its best if I print everything out and then I follow along the printed draft as I listen, marking errors.
TTS would definitely help a lot⊠if it wasnât for the fact that it sounds so rhythmically off and broken for French. â It just sucks, no matter the voice you choose (Windows).
Si quelquâun en connaĂźt une alternative francophone fonctionnelle et performante, je suis tout ouĂŻe.
Probably isnât much better but I tried your sample sentence with Siri; actually the say command line tool. Unfortunately Discourse is preventing me from uploading it.
I usually edit with both editors open, with a âscratch padâ document on the rhs. My Scriv documents are scenes (occasionally sub-scenes, if the scene is very long).
At the sentence-level, I copy the problematic sentence into the scratch pad and break it into clauses, with a blank line between each. I then work on the clauses individually, copying and pasting one of the clauses for each new attempt.
The first benefit is isolating the sentence from everything around it, which I quite often find to be a distraction. The second is isolating the clauses themselves.
Once in this state, you can start asking questions about the sentenceâs purpose and whether the words you are using are the best, most precise, etc. for your needs; and indeed whether the order of clauses should be changed or split into another sentence or deleted.
The whole sentence has to work of course; but I leave that to the end, and then deploy my usual bag of tricks for fixing rhythm and other ticks.
I do the same thing with paragraphs sometimes. It often turns up sentences that would better live elsewhere.
Anyway, I sympathize with your difficulty, I have the same issue. Reading out loud is tedious but can also work. Not always feasible however, for longer works. If I could have a dollar for every time my teachers wrote âneeds better proofreadingâ on top of my assignments growing up, Iâd be richâŠ
You could try pasting text into Google translate and then press the âspeechâ icon. The voice rendition into French is quite pleasant and euphonic. The only downside is that there is a 5000 character limit. You can do the same with many other languages. Not all have the TTS capability. And at least one that I tried (Croatian) was a robot voice but others sounded natural. And with many you can change the speed of playback by toggling it off and on.
It is already better, thanks. âŠbut still too defective.
Two problems:
1- It doesnât render ; and â properly. (Sometimes ; gives a freakishly long pause; sometimes no pause at all.)
2- (Where it definitely turns unusable) They kind of try to give natural inflexions to the voices, but those end up randomly anywhere in the sentence, making the voices sound like how would someone that was raised in the wild by squirrels read.
At this point, if I could find a lifeless, toneless, robotic voice, that would actually fit my need much better.
Something similar to what Stephen Hawking was using would probably be just perfect.
