Writing Aloud
When I worked in publishing, there was speculation amongst the editorial staff that some mistakes could be detected only after a book went to press. As soon as a book was printed and bound, someone would spot an error. “How did this get missed?!” one of us would exclaim.
It’s almost impossible to catch every mistake, but if you read your work aloud, to yourself or someone else, you’ll catch most of them. Many aspects of your writing are more easily heard than seen. Grammar mistakes, clumsy phrasing, and overused words are spotlighted by the audible voice.
In case you haven’t discovered this, your eyes and your brain team up to trick you when it comes to proofreading and editing. As you read silently, your eyes may see a spelling mistake, missing word, or punctuation problem, but your brain “autocorrects,” making the error invisible. Curiously enough, when you read a piece of writing aloud, particularly when you read to someone else, the invisibility cloak is torn away. You stumble over the reading, then stop and say, “That’s not right.” On many occasions, I’ve proofread my own work and whisper-read it to myself, only to be baffled when I shared it aloud with a family member (who was in the wrong place at the right time) and wondered, “Where did all these mistakes come from?”
Reading aloud reveals the tone, rhythm, and flow of your writing. Does the piece sound formal or conversational? Are you breathless from a scarcity of stops? Or, are there too many stops? When you read aloud, you feel the words as they leave your mouth, and awkward phrasing becomes blatant. Disconnected ideas become uncomfortable. An ill-formed sentence or paragraph cannot satisfy the demands of oral reading.
As a side note, be consistent and be clear. If you’re going to write numbers over ten as numerals, then make sure you do so throughout your piece. As you read, listen for vague references. Have you assumed the reader knows something she probably does not? Did your brain fill in a knowledge gap with an imaginary footnote? If you’re debating whether a comma is necessary, and grammatical rules offer flexibility, side with clarity. Reading aloud is the perfect opportunity to observe your audience. Hopefully, your listeners are nodding their heads in understanding, not squinting their eyes in confusion.
This month’s advice is read your work out loud. Even better, read it to someone else. Make changes as you do. Then, read it out loud again.