Do you know what one of the hardest things about editing drafts is? Being too familiar with text. You can read over something a hundred times and miss that one mistake that has been there since day one. It’s funny how the human brain works. I remember in school (oh so many years ago) we used to have reading tests where they deliberately had paragraphs with extra words and missing words. But, depsite that, you could still read and understand everything that was written. The brain has an amazing ability to fill in the gaps and ignore the duplicates. While this is great for everyday use, it’s a bt of a bugger when you’re trying to edit.

Well recently I upgraded my ageing Office install and went with Office 365. Yes I still use Scrivener for formatting once everything is written but with Office I can use it on my phone and tablet (still no android Scrivener, grrrrr). And you never know when inspiration will hit. Plus my laptop is a little under the weather. Anyway, I digress.

I was playing around, learning the new interface and I came across an option called ‘Read Aloud’. You guys know me, I suffer technojoy. I’ll push buttons just to see what things will do. So I opened up one of my old short stories and gave it a go. It was a bit of an eye opener. I’ve read through that manuscript a hundred times and not noticed mistakes that now seem glaring and obvious. All from hearing it read out loud by a totally different voice.

Now obvioulsy the AI being used isn’t going to be able to replicate the nuace and subtleties of an actual person reading out loud. But that doesn’t matter. Hearing instead of reading makes it much easier to spot duplicates or missing words. Or even words with missing letters. Yes I do that quite often when typing, just ask my bestie about some of the utter garbage she has received in messenger. It’s a handy little tool and a rather pleasant and unexpected find.

Look at me, the former UNIX admin praising a Microsoft product. I feel a little dirty.

There is another unexpected aspect to all this. One that comes from that little voice all writers and artists have. That self doubting little bastard who tries to make you hate your own work. You all know the one. Well next time they try and pipe up, give the Read Aloud feature a go. It really puts a new persepctive on things. I’d even say it gives you a bit of a buzz. And you know what? That’s a good thing. We kick ourselves a lot when we create. So let yourself have a moment of joy for a change. Give that self esteem a boost and use that to keep the words flowing, the brush stroking, the clay moulding or whatever it is you are to doing to create. You’re an artist and you’re brilliant.

I will start by saying that I have been holding off on this post simply because I know if I get one comma out of place or have one typo, people are going to eat me alive. Today I am going to talk about a pet peeve of mine. It can be summed up in one phrase that I see all too often.

its facebook speling and gramer dont matter

(errors added for dramatic effect).

Social Media has become everyone’s favourite place to argue with total strangers over just about anything and everything you can think of. And that’s fine. I’m all for lively debate discourse. Admittedly that’s not what is going on but you get the general idea. More often than not, what we actually get is a lot of incoherent rambling. By incoherent I mean it’s basically unreadable. Endless run on sentences without so much as a comma or a full stop that would make even the best Orator of Ancient Greece scratch their head in confusion. (See the book: The Accidental Apostrophe to get that reference).

So here’s the thing. If you are trying to get a point across, people need to be able to understand what you are saying. And this is the whole point of punctuation. It isn’t some kind of system solely designed to torture school children; it is how we can convey meaning and emotion through text. It let’s the reader know when to pause for effect, when to stop and breath. How often do we see misunderstandings when a simple comma or even a full stop would have made so much difference? The classic example of this are: “Let’s eat, Grandad” and “Let’s eat Grandad”. Three identical words but two very different meanings. That little comma makes the difference between a nice family meal and patriarchal cannibalism.

How can you expect to convince someone of your point, if you are unable to properly get your message across. I’m not talking about everyone learning the finer points of correct grammar. I’m saying think about how your message sounds. If you read that, would you be convinced? At the very least throw in a full stop every 50 words so your audience can pause for a breath. Try this next time you write something with no punctuation marks. Breath in normally and the start reading, breathing out as you go. Now here’s the thing. You’re not allowed to breath in again until you are finished. You have to make that single breath last the entire time while taking in what is being said. Not so easy, is it.

Even the simplest of discussions will be made better by stopping and thinking for a moment about what you want you want to convey. If you don’t believe that your spelling and grammar are important, then very likely your point isn’t either. At the very least, that is what will be conveyed to your audience.