Geoff W. Sutton Blog: Proofread Your Text with "Read Aloud" in Word

I read a lot of papers and manuscripts and find so many errors. I'm not talking about graduate students. I'm talking about professors, clinicians, and famous authors writing for journals and magazines. The editing work of popular books is better, but their work is not perfect. If major authors cannot get things right with the help of professional editors, I would guess most of us need some extra help. It turns out that some people are unaware of the "Read Aloud" option in Microsoft Word. So, here's what I found.

I can proofread my text with the “Read Aloud” option in Microsoft Word. to try it, type some text to be read. You will need speakers hooked up to hear the voice. Also, you will need a recent version of word that includes the "Read Aloud" option.

Firstly, click on the Review Tab at the top of the Ribbon.

Secondly, find the “Read Aloud” item on the left section of the ribbon--see below.

Thirdly, place your cursor on the first word of your text.

Fourthly, click on the “Read Aloud” option to hear the voice read your text at the point of your cursor.

Listen to the voice read as each word is highlighted. Pause it to make corrections then click play to continue.

I used "Read Aloud" to proofread my latest book after using the regular proofing helps under Review plus Grammarly.

What about UK English?

I highlighted the following text as UK English and chose the UK option under Language (see the picture above) to hear a British voice read the following with the UK spelling of recognise and "Z" read as "Zed" instead of the American "Zee." (You will need to add the UK option if it is not in your version of Word.)

Change to recognise UK English from A to Z.

What about other languages?

I would be careful adding other languages unless you can read them and navigate around Windows in another language to correct mistakes. When I added Spanish, it changed all my Windows settings to Spanish, which I had to reset to my preferred language of English.

Here's the Microsoft Support link in case you need help. https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/use-the-speak-text-to-speech-feature-to-read-text-aloud-459e7704-a76d-4fe2-ab48-189d6b83333c

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