I’ve blogged before about how text to speech software is the greatest new tool for writers since the invention of the word processor. This software makes it vastly easier to catch typos, and you can sit back and close your eyes and listen to your story being read aloud, which greatly aids in polishing. But nobody I talk to seems to know about or use it, even people who have Macs, which have text to speech capability built right in. So I’m going to show you how to use it. It’s really easy. Give it a try. Seriously.
First click on the Apple icon and select “System Preferences”:
Next select the Speech icon:
Select “Text to Speech” and make sure you choose the Alex voice, which sounds much better than the others:
Select “Set Key” and pick a key combo for reading text aloud. I use Control + S:
Now just highlight any text in any program or document (emails, your story) and hit Control + S (or whatever). Your computer will start reading. Hit Control + S (or whatever) again to make it stop.
And that’s all there is to it.
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