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It does take a certain amount of skill when it comes to proofreading documents especially when it is your own work. No matter how hard you concentrate on the task in hand, you can easily miss mistakes. This can often happened when you see what you expect to see rather than what is actually there. For some, myself included, printing a draft copy for proofreading purposes does help somewhat but doesn’t totally alleviate the problem – you still see what you expect to see. One possible solution is to make use of technology in the form of text-to-speech capability. Fitting into this category is WordRead from Sonant Software.

WordRead, as you might suppose from its title, is capable of reading back text from a Word document. You simply insert the mouse cursor at the appropriate point in the document and then click on the WordRead Start button and the text will be read back to you. A settings tool can be used to customise the speed and volume of delivery (but not pitch) to suit your personal taste. By default the voice will be female but other voices and language versions are available.

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While Word documents are the product’s prime target, it can also handle text found in other word processors, spreadsheets, emails, certain PDF files and Internet browsers. In order for WordRead to work with non-Word documents you will need to first copy the designated text to the clipboard. WordRead will then be able to read back the content. There is also an option to generate a WAVE file of WordRead’s output for checking at a later date. However you should be aware that this process can be time consuming and does produce rather large files. For example a document with 100 words produced a 900KB WAVE file.

WordRead sits quietly in the system tray until needed. It then announces its readiness with a voice greeting before displaying a small tool bar that automatically positions itself over the title bar of the active window. The bar holds buttons to start and stop the reading plus adjust the speed and volume settings, change to another voice if available and record the reading.

The product is based on RealSpeak. This technology was originally developed by Lernout & Hauspie, a company that demonstrated a perfect example of how easy it is to fall from grace. L&H, as it is often referred to, was regarded as the leader in speech recognition technology. It even bought out Dragon and its Naturally Speaking product line, a superior offering in my opinion, in an effort to dominate the market. However certain financial irregularities were uncovered and this resulted in heavy penalties, including jail sentences, being imposed. The company went into bankruptcy and its family jewels were sold off with ScanSoft being the main beneficiary and the current owner of RealSpeak.

The RealSpeak technology provides the means by which the text is converted into “human-sounding” voice playback. While we have long since passed the point of Dalek or Stephen Hawkins style of delivery, the technology is not yet capable of producing perfect speech. Some jerkiness, clipped words and occasional strange pronunciation does tend to spoil the effect. The end result, however, is not bad and is up to the task of producing acceptable results.

For those looking for help in proofreading documents, this product could prove useful. It does not provide a complete solution, grammar and spell-checkers still have a part to play, but it can help take the hassle out of what might be an onerous task. The standard version of WordRead is available for £69.32 which includes shipping cost. It can also be purchased by download. Additional languages will cost from £23.48

Link : http://www.WordRead.com